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

blogs.scientificamerican.com

241–250 of 393 posts

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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moon has water ice in dark craters, as well as minable ore that contain aluminum, iron, silicon and oxygen. You will "just" need to use heavy mining and smelting gear to extract it. Solar power and batteries should work assuming you're willing to build your base among the "peaks of [near] eternal light" which get sunshine nearly ninety percent of the time.

This is mostly true on Mars too except perhaps the eternal light part

Mars has a lot more benefit here, in that it has a normal-length day. Much better to reliably have sunlight for roughly half of every day than to rely on a few polar areas that are in sunlight most of the time. The equator of the Moon is more suitable for other reasons, so what are you going to do, put the solar panels at the poles and run long power lines down to the equatorial regions where the power is used? Nah.

Mars is better for solar power because you won't need nearly as much battery capacity, as you get light on a ~24 hour cycle same as Earth. The Moon with its slow rotation is much more challenging.

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

#242

The dangers of radiation on Mars are greatly exaggerated. The dangers of low gravity on Titan and elsewhere are greatly understated, as is the immense distance between Mars and Titan. A floating habitat on Venus is harder and less attractive in every way than a rotating space station, which is clearly our next milestone in space. In terms of planets though, there's a reason Mars gets the most attention: it's obviousl…

I, too, have concerns about how well humans will thrive in low gravity (the moon, Mars, etc). Over time, we could evolve a branch of humanity, "Homo ares", for Mars, but it won't be easy. Venus is just a tragic waste of a planet. So close to Earth in size, so wrong in every other way.

> Over time, we could evolve a branch of humanity, "Homo ares"

These were called Belters (as in asteroid belt) in the excellent book series The Expanse, which is also an excellent sci-fi show available on Amazon.

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

#243

Am I missing something here? "On the surface, vast quantities of hydrocarbons in solid and liquid form lie ready to be used for energy. 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. " [my emphasis.] They are proposing splitting water to get oxygen for burning hydrocarbons to produce energy - but splitting water…

Even if it does not, you could use it as a nice chemical battery. Say you split some water ice using energy from you nuclear reactor (or possibly even a turbine in your methanoelectric dam!) and store the pressurized oxygen. Then you can use the stored oxygen with methane from the atmosphere to provide a lot of energy where needed, possibly far away from your main nuclear reactor, dam on a liquid methane river or oth…

An example would be rocket fuel to leave, so you don't have to bring it all with you.

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're planning to build a literal castle in the sky out of convenient gasses, this is completely unworkable. Even at that altitude the cloud layer is still very turbulent and very toxic, and no structure will be absolutely gas-tight. And if the temperature is 75 °C outside, it's going to take insane amounts of energy to keep the inside of your hab cool - especially if it's made of metal and not rock. (A thin…

There are perhaps ways to mine Venus surface materials; something like dredging. Dedicated development of high-temp computing may also make longer-term robotic operations possible. None of that's particularly convenient, of course, and I can't imagine why you'd want to do it. But one can say that about every other extra-terrestrial option, too.

You would need a 50km long dredge. That seems completely unworkable; that's much longer than the deepest of deep mining operations we have here on Earth, and we aren't nearly as constrained on Earth as you would be on Venus. How would you even get such a thing to Venus? The only realistic way to do so would be to construct it of local materials, but now we have a chicken-and-egg problem.

Plus, keep in mind that a lot of the materials you would use for such a dredge on Earth won't work on Venus, because the atmosphere will corrode them.

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

#245

Sincere question: Anyone know what would be involved in igniting Jupiter, and what kind of heating that would provide to it's moons?

Oh well, there are ways. Let me introduce the Stellification Engine:

https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4a48d58c84350

A mass of self-replicating hot hydrogen dirigibles powered by fusion. They use part of the energy to stay afloat in the correct altitude and to repair and reproduce & radiate the rest outwards.

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

#246
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

since the film ends with him leaving we don't know if he dies or not, but outlook does not exactly look promising. Then again nothing of Vincent's life has ever looked promising.

We cannot be sure, sure, but absolutely everything in the movie indicates that Vincent survives. The whole story arc for him is that he overcomes everything, even rescuing his genetically superior brother from drowning on the way, and prevails. Edit, to add: the name Vincent is derived from the Greek/Latin word for conquering/winning... so there’s that too.

- Vincent Freeman = Victorious Free Man

- Jerome Morrow = Sacred Name of Tomorrow/The Future

> Jerome is a masculine name of Greek origin, derived from the Greek given name Ἱερώνυμος, Hierōnymos, "sacred name"; from ἱερός, hierós, "sacred", and ὄνυμα, ónyma, an alternative form of ὄνομα, ónoma, "name".

The names chosen were actually pretty genius, especially considering that Jerome's name/identity is the one used "to build the future", and in the last conversation Vincent has (with the doctor), is referred to as Vincent, his real name.

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

#247
post #70

If you can you should check out the TV series Avenue 5. It’s a sci-fi comedy and whoever they hired to do their science is really knocking it out the park. Some of the true science I’ve seen in the shown: the ship is massive enough to have its own gravity. Objects that get lost in space don’t float away. They orbit the ship. They use passenger effluent as a cosmic radiation shield. And due to an anomaly they don’t ge…

I gotta disagree. The physics in the show is disappointingly cartoonish in my opinion. The ship is not massive enough for it's gravity to capture the, uh, various items in the orbit shown. Even the orbital mechanics of the delay are just a plot device.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it does not, you could use it as a nice chemical battery. Say you split some water ice using energy from you nuclear reactor (or possibly even a turbine in your methanoelectric dam!) and store the pressurized oxygen. Then you can use the stored oxygen with methane from the atmosphere to provide a lot of energy where needed, possibly far away from your main nuclear reactor, dam on a liquid methane river or oth…

An example would be rocket fuel to leave, so you don't have to bring it all with you.

Definitely, can use it to power chemical rockets as well. :)

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

#249
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True Venus' atmosphere is quite hostile, but from what I briefly read Venus quite probably have had a similar atmosphere with Earth (along with Mars) in the early days, before the runaway green-house effect got the best of it, so at least in theory it should be possible to transform it back. With autonomous robots perhaps it could be done in a span of million years. Maybe. A relatable analogue might be removing liqui…

I've often wondered if crashing a metropolis-sized piece of ice into Venus might help? Deflected from Saturn's rings or some such. The water vapor could cool it/reflect sunlight.

It's not a question of cooling it. It went into a runwaway greenhouse effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect) and it lacks hydrogen. All the hypothetical oceans oxygen bonded with carbon and hydrogen/water vapor was blown off by solar wind. The underlying cause was the loss of the protective magnetosphere.

Also, you are probably looking more to continent or small moon size quantities of ice (if that even works, and if the magnetosphere issue was somehow addressed) that metropolis.

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

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And its proximity is probably the most important factor?

I'm not so sure about that. It takes more delta-v to get to the moon than mars and both are still too far for immediate response to emergencies. Sure the moon has the advantage of emergency assistance of a few days (?) but I don't think that's more valuable than all of Mars's pros

> It takes more delta-v to get to the moon than mars

Is that true? I can't see how that'd be true, unless maybe you are considering aerobraking to enter mars orbit and parachutes for landing on the surface (?)

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