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Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#131

Post by aaron695 »

keiferski wrote: post #31

Two thoughts on this topic: 1. The film Gattaca (1997), in addition to being an excellent, inspiring film all around, centers on an aspiring astronaut's upcoming trip to Titan. Highly recommended. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZa83dTf4JA 2. The colonization of Venus is also a fascinating idea that isn't talked about much in comparison to the Moon or Mars. Essentially, the surface is too hot for colonization, but…

> floating cities

We have decided on Mars, can we stop forking it. Have we learning nothing from Linux?

But if you have to, could you hurry up and make a floating city on earth to practice?

People would pay a tonne of money for that, and having floating cities (In reality small communal groups, so more a village) would be very very neat.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#132

Post by mothsonasloth »

How does this Methane develop on Titan vs. other hydrocarbons (Ethane, Propane) etc. ?

Could we not bomb Titan with some sort of water catalyser and burn up a large amount of Methane?

Certainly would be good as a fuel source.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#133

Post by unethical_ban »

aaron695 wrote: post #131
keiferski wrote: post #31

Two thoughts on this topic: 1. The film Gattaca (1997), in addition to being an excellent, inspiring film all around, centers on an aspiring astronaut's upcoming trip to Titan. Highly recommended. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZa83dTf4JA 2. The colonization of Venus is also a fascinating idea that isn't talked about much in comparison to the Moon or Mars. Essentially, the surface is too hot for colonization, but…

> floating cities We have decided on Mars, can we stop forking it. Have we learning nothing from Linux? But if you have to, could you hurry up and make a floating city on earth to practice ? People would pay a tonne of money for that, and having floating cities (In reality small communal groups, so more a village) would be very very neat.

Simulating a land-based, completely sealed off mars- or moon-base in Antarctica is one thing. Simulating the conditions of a base floating in an atmosphere of CO2 is quite another.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#134

Post by vl »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #127
tiborsaas wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there were no cultural backslash then we would probably already have a McDonalds there :)

Ha! Though actually you can't eat on top of Mt Everest. Your digestion stops moving at the previous base camp.

But why? Due to low air pressure? McDonald’s obviously will be pressurized.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#135

Post by saiya-jin »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #104
WalterBright wrote: post #41

Colonize the moon first: 1. plenty of solar power 2. close to earth 3. easy to launch out of its gravity well 4. lunar base technology can be iterated far more rapidly

Colonize the top of Mt Everest first? Even closer to Earth. Similar challenged. 250,000 miles closer to resupply. Very hard, a good test of colonizing technology.

Won't develop space travel and sustainment technologies much. With that logic, we can colonize oceans (and probably discover a thing or two about our origins and new life forms)

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#136

Post by jcranmer »

wyldfire wrote: post #130
keiferski wrote: post #31

Two thoughts on this topic: 1. The film Gattaca (1997), in addition to being an excellent, inspiring film all around, centers on an aspiring astronaut's upcoming trip to Titan. Highly recommended. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZa83dTf4JA 2. The colonization of Venus is also a fascinating idea that isn't talked about much in comparison to the Moon or Mars. Essentially, the surface is too hot for colonization, but…

> . At this height, the temperature is a manageable 75 °C (348 K; 167 °F); or 27 °C (300 K; 81 °F) if we could get 5 km (3.1 mi) higher I wonder -- what is the hottest air temperature humans could endure long term outdoors. Assuming you could adjust to the discomfort of warm air temps, how hot would it have to be before it's hazardous?

Our body's principle means of cooling is via sweat. When sweating stops being effective, it's basically impossible to cool down, and you're going to die of heat stroke if you don't go somewhere colder and/or less humid. Sweating breaks down at a wet-bulb temperature of ~100°F, and hitting even dry-bulb temperatures in the 150°F range is going to start to be lethal.

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#137

Post by nradov »

wyldfire wrote: post #130
keiferski wrote: post #31

Two thoughts on this topic: 1. The film Gattaca (1997), in addition to being an excellent, inspiring film all around, centers on an aspiring astronaut's upcoming trip to Titan. Highly recommended. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZa83dTf4JA 2. The colonization of Venus is also a fascinating idea that isn't talked about much in comparison to the Moon or Mars. Essentially, the surface is too hot for colonization, but…

> . At this height, the temperature is a manageable 75 °C (348 K; 167 °F); or 27 °C (300 K; 81 °F) if we could get 5 km (3.1 mi) higher I wonder -- what is the hottest air temperature humans could endure long term outdoors. Assuming you could adjust to the discomfort of warm air temps, how hot would it have to be before it's hazardous?

It depends on the humidity. The maximum wet bulb temperature that healthy humans can endure long term is about 35 °C.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-bulb_...

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#138

Post by BuildTheRobots »

tantalor wrote: post #119
davidhyde wrote: post #112

It’s “Scientific” American yet they quote negative 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Use kelvin for low temperatures or, if you have to, at least degrees Celsius. For the benefit of the reader -300 F is 89 kelvin or -184 Celsius which is about 10 degrees c above liquid nitrogen’s boiling point.

The article is about human colonization, so Fahrenheit is more appropriate unit because it represents human compatible temperature ranges better than C or K.

> Fahrenheit is more appropriate unit because it represents human compatible temperature

0 being the freezing point of a mix of water, ice and ammonium chloride and 100 being almost the average human body temperature - or to put it another way, "a random number fixed to a variable". Neither of these are things I can instinctively understand as a human.

Celcius on the other hand uses extremely hard to grasp concepts for a human, like the freezing point of water and at the upper end of the scale (is it a random number? no, it's) the boiling point of water - both things a person is likely to encounter in their lifetime, possibly even more than once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nROK4cjQVXM

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#139

Post by war1025 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #133
aaron695 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> floating cities We have decided on Mars, can we stop forking it. Have we learning nothing from Linux? But if you have to, could you hurry up and make a floating city on earth to practice ? People would pay a tonne of money for that, and having floating cities (In reality small communal groups, so more a village) would be very very neat.

Simulating a land-based, completely sealed off mars- or moon-base in Antarctica is one thing. Simulating the conditions of a base floating in an atmosphere of CO2 is quite another.

Wouldn't it come down to basically just a boat / submarine?

Re: Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth where humans could live

#140

Post by shawabawa3 »

3solarmasses wrote: post #129
tantalor wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is about human colonization, so Fahrenheit is more appropriate unit because it represents human compatible temperature ranges better than C or K.

Exactly. Very few people get this. Fahrenheit is better for communicating temperatures in daily life. Plus we can be more precise in our language due to the expanded scale. e.g. We can say 62 degrees F, rather than 16.6667 degrees C.

> Exactly. Very few people get this. Fahrenheit is better for communicating temperatures in daily life.

Literally the entire rest of the world disagrees with you

I've never needed a less than 1 degree unit for describing temperature, except in scientific contexts, where using 2 decimal places is fine

I don't see why "100 ~= body temperature (with fever)" is a useful scale point. Or why 32F = freezing is useful in daily life

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