Oil Workers In Space Wanted?

[cronus]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... qtXctJdWqg

Astrophile: Titan lake has more liquid fuel than Earth

Object: Mirror-smooth lake on Titan
Contents: Huge volume of pure liquid methane

Imagine standing on the lush shores of a lake. Now imagine that it isn't one on Earth. The vegetation disappears, the temperature drops to -179ºC, and the sky takes on a sickly orange hue. Despite a bone-chilling breeze, the lake's dark surface lacks even the tiniest ripple. Welcome to Ligeia Mare on Titan.

Saturn's largest satellite is an eerie world about the size of Mercury. It is the only moon in the solar system with a thick, hazy atmosphere and the only place aside from Earth that has large bodies of liquid on its surface. But there's also one very big difference: on frigid Titan, the lakes and seas are filled with liquid hydrocarbons, such as methane. They also tend to be very smooth.

Earlier radar maps made by NASA's Cassini probe had revealed that the largest southern lake, Ontario Lacus, is super-smooth, varying in height by less than 3 millimetres. The latest Cassini results, presented yesterday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, show that Ligeia Mare near the moon's north pole is even flatter. Its surface height changes by no more than 1 millimetre.

"That's a very interesting result, because we know there are beautiful 100-metre-high dunes near Titan's equator, and in order to create dunes, you need wind," says Alexander Hayes at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His team is now developing models to figure out why the winds are not making waves on Titan.

Seasonally smooth

Flatness may be a seasonal trait, at least for Ligeia Mare, suggests Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker. A year on Titan corresponds to 30 Earth years, which means Cassini has been observing a long winter on the moon's northern half. But soon northern spring should begin.

"In the next few years we are entering the most exciting time for Titan weather," says Spilker. "What will these years bring as the north pole of Titan approaches summer and the sun is high in the sky? Will the lakes evaporate or fill with methane rain? Will the winds kick up, creating waves and little hurricanes on the lakes?"

Extreme flatness in the north wasn't the only surprise from Cassini's latest look at Titan. Previously, the liquid in Ligeia Mare was thought to be a chemical stew dominated by ethane. But the radar observations were able to peer all the way to the lake's bottom, which suggests that the liquid is unexpectedly clear and pure. The results also show that it is mostly filled with methane, the main component in natural gas.

"Measurements indicate that the lake is 160 metres deep, and it alone contains by volume about 40 times more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's global oil reservoir," says Hayes. "Together, all of Titan's visible lakes and seas contain about 300 times the volume of Earth's proven oil reserves."

(continued, the ship will be called The Nostromo?)

[Clinton Huxley]

Regime change imminent.

[Audley Strange]

Regime change imminent.

Excellent.

[Sean Hayden]

[Calilasseia]

Regime change imminent.

Which might fly out of the window if the 'regime' consists of microbes with an interesting biochemistry, because the moment that happens, scientists will want Titan ring fencing against the sort of intrusion that's buggered up ecosystems here on Earth. Though of course, intrusion of that sort will be a teensy bit difficult for us to pursue for the next 250 years or so. We've yet to conquer the problems of getting a small number of humans the 30 or so million miles to Mars (distance cited of course being that during closest approach to Earth), then bringing them back alive, and even if those problems are solved, there's the little matter of the trip being a lot more than 30 million miles, because of the vagaries of orbital dynamics. Getting to Titan will involve multiplying those headaches by a factor of 100 or more. Even when the Saturnian system is closest to Earth, the distance is close to 800 million miles, and at the moment, it takes a spacecraft from Earth about three years to cover that distance, even if you use a fuel-expensive trajectory for the most direct approach. The Cassini probe, in order to save fuel (amongst other factors), used a complex gravity slingshot trajectory involving flybys of Venus, Earth and Jupiter, and took 7 years to complete. I don't think anyone has spent 7 years in low Earth orbit to date, let alone 7 years in deep space, so we don't even know if humans can survive that long in a microgravity environment. Of course, for the round trip, we're looking at about 14 years in space, so we're looking at arranging for candidate astronauts to be groomed for the trip from childhood, and shot into space at the age of 18, say, because even if they begin the mission at that young age, they'll be 32 years old when they return. If you select a 30 year old astronaut at the start of the trip, said astronaut will be 44 upon return.

Let's assume it's demonstrated that humans can stay in space for 14 years, which is quite an undertaking even in low Earth orbit, with the benefits of being no more than 200 miles from the planet's surface. Though of course, if something goes seriously shit shaped life support wise whilst up there, escaping from the resulting catastrophe is still far from trivial. At the moment, it takes weeks to construct and launch a space vehicle, even one that has been in production for some time such as the Soyuz series, and which has had most of the bugs ironed out as a result. So if there's not enough space aboard the existing docked units on the ISS to let everyone jump ship in the event of a major catastrophe, whoever gets left behind is fucked.

This possibility becomes even worse on a Mars mission. When you're 60 million miles from home, you can't just ring the AA and hail a breakdown truck if something goes shit shaped. Any rescue mission will take about three months to get to you. If you don't have that three months to wait, tough shit.

Now scale the problem up to a manned mission to Titan. You need a spacecraft that will carry your astronauts, safe and well, for 7 years on the outbound journey, keep them alive whilst they're there, whether they simply remain in orbit or land, and keep then going for the return trip, which, in the worst case scenario, involves another 7 years of flight. Assuming that the astronauts are going to be doing something constructive whilst on Titan, they'll be there for a year at least, possibly two or three years, which means we're looking at providing a spaceship with bomb-proof life support systems, capable of operating with little or no maintenance for 17 years, in a range of temperature and radiation extremes.

There's also the little matter of food. In 17 years, one human being munches his way through about 5 tons of food. If you send three astronauts on the trip, that's 15 tons of food they'll need, and it had better not be perishable either. If you want the diet to be something other than monotonous freeze-dried food, you'll be looking a sending up a mini-ecosystem to provide it, and keeping that alive for 17 years.

So, to make such a venture feasible, we're looking at building something the mass of the USS Abraham Lincoln in space, and sending it to Titan. We're looking at building, in effect, a small spacefaring city. Then there's the matter of the engines (and the fuel) to propel something that size, even at the sort of speeds that involve a 17 year round trip, which by interplanetary standards, is a fucking snail's pace. By the time you're into this sort of construction project, you might as well go the whole hog, build yourself a massive Bussard Ramjet, and send your astronauts to Alpha Centauri, because the round trip will actually take less time with such a piece of kit.

This, of course, is merely the technological tip of the problem iceberg. Then you have the sociological and psychological problems, arising from having a small group cut off from the rest of humanity, apart from occasional radio contact, for 17 years. The sort of people who could conduct that mission successfully without going mad, and turning the mission into a Hollywood gore-fest of murder and mayhem as a result of developing irreversible psychoses, are few and far between. NASA has its work cut out finding people who are likely to be compatible on a mission whose duration is measured in days, let alone years - see the Apollo programme for more on this. Then, those people, when they return, will have to adjust to being suddenly re-introduced to a planet full of 7 billion people, and subject to the inevitable media swarm.

Indeed, I suspect that the whole experience of long duration spaceflight of this sort, is going to impose psychological challenges of a sort that few will be capable of prevailing against. Which means that until we develop the ability to send entire communities of individuals into space, we'll be looking at pioneer astronauts paying a very high price for their endeavours. Then, once we're able to send communities into space, we have a separate set of problems. Such as avoiding the community in question turning into North Korea in space. How do you choose, in a reliable manner, people who can be counted upon to put their leadership abilities to good use in such a situation? We have a big enough problem doing this with politicians on Earth.

Somehow, I think the worst that any Titanian microbes can expect from us humans in the following decades, is having the odd robot rover dropped in their midst.

[cronus]

Technological progress is exponential and most of these issues are twenty or thirty year ones if focus emerges. I'd suggest whoever/whatever placed Titan in orbit also placed the oil in The Middle East for geo-political reasons to do with a emergent one world governance which will establish the required focus....it is a lot of oil on Titan - no one is sure where the oil here came from or how it came about....likely Titan juice in your tank....likely whoever/whatever put the juice here is still abouts.

[pErvinalia]

Regime change imminent.

[pErvinalia]

I say we just bring Titan to us via a series of nuclear explosions proximal enough to deflect it out of orbit with Saturn and into orbit with us. Piss easy.

[cronus]

I say we just bring Titan to us via a series of nuclear explosions proximal enough to deflect it out of orbit with Saturn and into orbit with us. Piss easy.

Siphon it off since the lakes are all surface and the gravity is weak....use giant mirrors to make it less sticky. Fill balloons with the oil that are dragged back across the immense emptiness and placed in geo-stationary earth orbit. Construct barges on the moon to bring the oil to earth according to the economic situation.

[Tyrannical]

Titan is covered in hydrocarbons, but the abiotic theory of oil on Earth is considered crazy talk.

[Clinton Huxley]

Just needs a long pipe and someone willing to suck on one end of it

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Titan is covered in hydrocarbons, but the abiotic theory of oil on Earth is considered crazy talk.

Wow! Tyrannical made two reasonable statements in one post - this is progress!!1!

1. Titan is covered in hydrocarbons.
2. The abiotic theory of oil on Earth is considered crazy talk.

Sadly, he was unable to combine the two in any meaningful way. Keep trying...

[mistermack]

Astrophile: Titan lake has more liquid fuel than Earth

You can't call it fuel. It's not fuel. It's completely useless as a fuel. Unless you can discover other lakes, of liquid oxygen.
Here on earth, we get most of our oxygen for free.
I don't see that happening on Titan.

[Svartalf]

Titan is covered in hydrocarbons, but the abiotic theory of oil on Earth is considered crazy talk.

Wow! Tyrannical made two reasonable statements in one post - this is progress!!1!

1. Titan is covered in hydrocarbons.
2. The abiotic theory of oil on Earth is considered crazy talk.

Sadly, he was unable to combine the two in any meaningful way. Keep trying...

Sso there is/used to be life on Titan?

No, I'm joking, if it's methane, there's no need for life is there?

[JimC]

Titan is covered in hydrocarbons, but the abiotic theory of oil on Earth is considered crazy talk.

Wow! Tyrannical made two reasonable statements in one post - this is progress!!1!

1. Titan is covered in hydrocarbons.
2. The abiotic theory of oil on Earth is considered crazy talk.

Sadly, he was unable to combine the two in any meaningful way. Keep trying...

Sso there is/used to be life on Titan?

No, I'm joking, if it's methane, there's no need for life is there?

For a start, methane on Earth is rapidly destroyed by both biotic and non-biotic processes in any environment containing at least some oxygen...