On Topic Tuesday: Titan, the Sort of Orangy World (was Re: OTM: What now-undersupplied subgenre would you snap up?)

In article <e1gf3e$b7c$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
James Nicoll <jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <1144737163.442088.43040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

James Nicoll wrote:

Earth (of course). Europa and aren't Ganymede and Callisto
also possibles for subsurface oceans? Titan, maybe and definitely
there's liquid water leaving Enceladus.

Speaking of Titan, are there interesting aspects to its having an
atmosphere? Would that make colonizing easier or harder, for instance?

Pluses:

It's far away, so They will have a hard time making you
conform to the One World, Tree Hugging, Bra Burning Pi Isn't Equal
to Three Conspiracy.

Lots of organic material from which to build humans.

Thick atmosphere = radiation shielding.

Atmosphere is in chemical disequilibrium and this may be
exploitable as power source.

You don't need a vacuum suit to walk around and as far as I
know, we still don't have a good design for a vacuum suit.


Minus:

It's far away: a minimum energy orbit would take six years
and even advanced propulsion and tricksy gravity tricks would have
a hard time making Saturn as close to Earth as 19th Britain was
to Australia. Also, if something goes wrong, you probably will get
to provide a moral example for the folks at home long before Earth
can send help.

Lousy view: the sky is an opaque orange.

Can't breath the air.

Said air is as cold as liquid O2.

The air is so dense that in combination with the above, you will
lose heat about 40x as fast as you would at the South Pole. Make sure
your suit's heaters work before going out.

Ever tried to clean tholins off a face mask?

Probably no metals to speak of.

Also, for being the only known moon in the system with a
decent atmosphere, it's surprisingly poorly represented in SF. There's
Clarke's IMPERIAL EARTH, Nourse's TROUBLE ON TITAN (whose intro runs
something like "The great thing about Titan as a setting is that we
know nothing about it beyond these few facts, which will make it harder
for people to pick nits", which in turn relates to Clarke's citing in
IMPERIAL EARTH of Bradbury's refutation of someone's critique of his
astronomy) and um. I seem to be coming up dry. No doubt a flood of
titles will come to mind as soon as I post.

I suppose THE PUPPET MASTERS is connect to Titan but we
don't see anything set there.





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Relevant Pages

  • NASA Study Shows Titan and Early Earth Atmospheres Are Similar
    ... NASA STUDY SHOWS TITAN AND EARLY EARTH ATMOSPHERES ARE SIMILAR ... Organic haze in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon, Titan, is similar to ...
    (sci.space.news)
  • Re: Space Elevator/Pipeline for Titan
    ... Titans atmosphere combined with Earth's atmosphere as an energy source ... Titan is synchronized with Saturn, the same way the moon is ... material continually toward Earth. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: OTM: What now-undersupplied subgenre would you snap up?
    ... Earth. ... Titan, maybe and definitely ... Thick atmosphere = radiation shielding. ... Said air is as cold as liquid O2. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • A setting question
    ... Titan: Surface gravity 1/7th of Earth's and with an atmospheric ... of aircraft on Titan +100 years as we see on Earth now? ... Oxygen could be liquified on Titan, given a little pressure. ... can we draw fuel in from the atmosphere and burn it with on-board O2? ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: Air-fueled aircraft on Titan
    ... Titan has just 14 % the gravitational attraction of Earth. ... pressure is 1,5 times higher, and temperature roughly 3 times lower ... the fission reactors scale down poorly. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.science)
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