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Let's Colonize Titan

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#371

Post by c22 »

samstave wrote: post #354
c22 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand, I suggest creating a self reliant population actively living below ground (or at the bottom of the ocean). They have to be able to survive indefinitely without help from the surface, but so would a martian colony to weather an ELE.

Do these populations currently exist? Or are you suggesting we build them? Have you looked into or thought about "breakaway civilization"?

I doubt such populations currently exist, though secrecy would be a requirement to defend against active attacks, so I suppose anything is possible. I'm also not necessarily suggesting we do this, but for those interested in colonizing other planets solely as insurance against major life impacting events on Earth it seems like this would be a more feasible near-term goal to achieve. It would also be an excellent test of the systems we'd need to deploy in the even more remote and hostile environments of other planets.

From my brief research, "breakaway civilization" is a keyword mostly associated with some extreme conspiracy theories concerning the Nazis and the inventions of Nikola Tesla?

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#372

Post by ryhamz »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #182
paulryanrogers wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If humans cannot live sustainably on Earth then what hope is there of existing in any form elsewhere?

I'm not sure the efficiency of the whole of humanity on earth and the efficiency of a comparably tiny colonial group is related in any way. There's a ton of momentum to overcome here on earth, and any change will need to occur across vast swaths of the population to be effective. That's an extremely tall order and it's extremely unlikely, as humans tend to ignore impending danger if there's no immediate consequence i…

I think he means in the long run. His claim is that eventually you have a large group of average intelligence humans on our new planet and we decided to pursue colonization tech instead of sustainable energy and environment tech.

Of course, my bet is that we will reach the point where we can sustain a planet before we run out of planets (assuming we colonize a planet).

My actual bet is that it's gg for humanity.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#373

Post by ryhamz »

Neeek wrote: post #342
khedoros1 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My commute is 12-15 minutes by car and 55 minutes to an hour and a half by bus (assuming the buses were actually on time, which is unrealistic here). Plus either time to make and pack a lunch, or the time to walk to a fast food restaurant near work for lunch. Plus a similar commute time back. It's somewhat faster (but more dangerous) to ride a bicycle. If my goal is a fast, safe commute, I don't have a realistic opti…

Get a moped. Safer than your pushie if your lacking the infrastructure, the only reason riding a bike is so dangerous anyway is the amount of cars on the road. Notice that basically all the cars on the road have 1 person and 4 empty seats every morning? You're burning all the fuel to basically move an empty car around, a 50cc moped is burning 36 times less fuel per power stroke than my corolla (ignoring combustion ef…

While I love mopeds and bought a 1980 vespa grande in college, I would not advise this.

As the song goes, "mopeds are always broke, but they easy to fix".

A moped WILL break down on you and be underpowered. My grande with a 70cc kit, performance variator and multiple breakdowns tops out around 41mph.

If you are not interested in repairing bikes or paying for their repair (if even possible in your city), avoid mopeds.

I'd recommend a 125cc+ scooter though. Reliability, fuel efficiency, and a bit more power which can increase safety. They also have more storage.

Don't forget to add in the fixed cost of gear!

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#374

Post by foobarian »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #356
stcredzero wrote: post #310

Although the atmosphere lacks oxygen, water ice just below the surface could be used to provide oxygen for breathing and to combust hydrocarbons as fuel. Red flag! It's a nonstarter to extract oxygen from water, use it to burn a hydrocarbon, then try to come out with more useful energy than you started with. This might have some use as an energy storage scheme, as storing hydrocarbons can be cheaper and more energy d…

I don't disagree with your red flag, I do however note that there are other ways of getting electricity out of hydrocarbons without cracking water. Specifically a the use of fuel cells. If you feed methane to a Bloom Energy fuel cell after initially filling it with some liquid water, it will generate 250kW of power as long as you feed in methane.

But... where does it get the oxygen?

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#375

Post by ryhamz »

pdonis wrote: post #219
chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add that there is poor, and inconsequential information directed at people on how to mitigate the causes of climate change. For instance, I've seen in my surroundings a disproportionate emphasis on recycling. Whatever happened to reducing and re-using? While recycling reduces our need to extract more resources, it still requires energy to transport to processing facilities and process. The real issue is not c…

> regular and predictable commutes are best done with public transit. In places where public transit has dense enough coverage to make commute times reasonable, yes. But that's not most places where Americans are commuting.

He's not saying the public transit solutions are implemented yet. For that to happen, people would need to re-allocate their funds from buying expensive private cars to a new public transit system.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#376

Post by simonh »

banach wrote: post #106

I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). If we start valuing quality over novelty, stop eating animal-based foods and re-organize to live closer to where we work, we can stop the consumption and that is taxing our ecos…

This is a distracting, thread-jacking non-sequitur that is nothing to do with the topic at hand.

We do need to live sustainably on Earth in the long term, but colonising the solar system isn't going to prevent it or meaningfully slow us down in doing so. Maybe we should do both? It's not an either-or situation.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#377

Post by ryhamz »

donatj wrote: post #6

I strongly believe we'll never permanently settle anything beyond earth, for reasons pointed out by this article among others. That said, please prove me wrong, I would be so very happy to be wrong.

My bet is that we call gg right here on Earth. We're simply not good enough.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#378

Post by wallace_f »

s_q_b wrote: post #337
stcredzero wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Titan's atmosphere is actually denser than Earth's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan

Dense atmospheres also make it much easier to enter, descend, and land (EDL), since they can be used for drag parachutes and atmospheric braking. The atmosphere on Mars by comparison is awful for landing spacecraft. It has just enough density to jumble the craft's trajectory, so vacuum-based EDL techniques similar to the moon landing are impossible, but it's too thin for atmospheric EDL systems similar to those used…

I wonder if it would also make it easier to exit--having dense atmosphere and low gravity. It might be possible to easily fly a rocket on the underbelly of a low-powered aircraft and launch it from the upper atmosphere.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#379

Post by khedoros1 »

Neeek wrote: post #342
khedoros1 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My commute is 12-15 minutes by car and 55 minutes to an hour and a half by bus (assuming the buses were actually on time, which is unrealistic here). Plus either time to make and pack a lunch, or the time to walk to a fast food restaurant near work for lunch. Plus a similar commute time back. It's somewhat faster (but more dangerous) to ride a bicycle. If my goal is a fast, safe commute, I don't have a realistic opti…

Get a moped. Safer than your pushie if your lacking the infrastructure, the only reason riding a bike is so dangerous anyway is the amount of cars on the road. Notice that basically all the cars on the road have 1 person and 4 empty seats every morning? You're burning all the fuel to basically move an empty car around, a 50cc moped is burning 36 times less fuel per power stroke than my corolla (ignoring combustion ef…

50-60 mph on a non-enclosed vehicle violates my requirement for safety. I'm not going to use something that can't be hit by another vehicle without killing me. There's an aggressive attitude toward driving here, and it disproportionately impacts small vehicles like scooters, bikes, mopeds, motorcycles, etc.

Re: Let's Colonize Titan

#380

Post by wallace_f »

banach wrote: post #106

I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). If we start valuing quality over novelty, stop eating animal-based foods and re-organize to live closer to where we work, we can stop the consumption and that is taxing our ecos…

They're not mutually exclusive nor does pursuing one hinder the other. They're not even the same type of problem. The "scarcity problem" on earth, as economists of late called it, is pretty close to being solved. Solving our problems on earth is a political problem. Colonizing other planets is a scientific and technological one.
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