The Sierras of Titan

eldavojohn writes "Cassini has detected the tallest mountains on Titan, a large moon of Saturn. More importantly, clouds have also been detected in Titan's atmosphere. Why is this news important? Well, as scientists scan the skies for the easiest piece of mass to colonize, things that resemble Earth's geology & atmosphere are going to require the least effort & resources. These mountains mean that Titan may have tectonic plate movement similar in some ways to earth's. From the article, '"You can think of Titan as the Earth in deep freeze," said Dr Rosaly Lopes, Cassini radar team member at the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It has a lot of the geological processes that Earth has. In fact, it is more Earth-like than anywhere else in the Solar System. But the surface is very cold; it's about minus 178C."'"

Comments

Water Ice

[Ford Prefect]

... But Titan's crust is made out of water ice. If you were to take it out of the deep-freeze and bring it to a comfortable, Earth-like temperature - it would melt.

While surface features may be analogous to those found here on Earth, they're made out of entirely different things...

Resembles Earth? No way!

[khallow]

Why is this news important? Well, as scientists scan the skies for the easiest piece of mass to colonize, things that resemble Earth's geology & atmosphere are going to require the least effort & resources.

Titan's atmosphere and general environment doesn't resemble Earth in the least. Hence, this sentence makes no sense. We've already found the few pieces places that are easiest to terraform, namely Mars, Venus, and perhaps Europa. Anything in orbit around Saturn won't qualify as "easiest", just because of temperature and energy flux from the Sun. You would need to find a long term energy source to heat the moon up to temperatures at which liquid water exists and and to enable photosynthesis . Either Titan gets moved or you make a local energy source. Terraforming the Moon is probably as easy.

Also, implied is confusion between colonization and terraforming. People can settle Titan, but they probably aren't going to make it Earth-like. In which case, any plate techtonics and geological activity may be very undesirable.

No radiaiton at Saturn

[EccentricAnomaly]

Saturn's rings effectively neutralize most radiation at Saturn... it's not much of a hazard at all. What little radiation there is wouldn't get through Titan's atmosphere anyway.

The only two planets with substantial radiation belts are Jupiter and Earth (i.e. the Van Allen belts). At Jupiter Io and Europa are in the belts, Callisto is too far out, and Ganymede has its own magnetic field that would protect spacecraft near it from the radiation.

BTW, the sort of radiation in these belts are electrons and energetic ions of regular stuff like Hydrogen and Oxygen. Not neutrons.... which makes it a little easier to protect against.