Let's Colonize Titan
They almost had me until ...<p><i>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.</i><p>Riiiight. And you&#x27;re going to get the power to electrolytically split that water into hydrogen and oxygen where, exactly?<p>(Whoever wrote that piece forgot that water is one of the <i>end products</i> of combusting hydrocarbons with oxygen, not a starting point. Basic physical chemistry and thermodynamics.)<p>Let&#x27;s go through the energy budget of a Titan colony point by point:<p>* Titan is so far out from the sun that the available solar power is roughly half what it is in Jupiter orbit, which in turn is a tenth of what we&#x27;re used to (per my skimming of this source: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lpi.usra.edu&#x2F;opag&#x2F;nov_2007_meeting&#x2F;presentations&#x2F;solar_power.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lpi.usra.edu&#x2F;opag&#x2F;nov_2007_meeting&#x2F;presentations&#x2F;...</a> ), and that&#x27;s before we factor in the murkily opaque atmosphere; I infer that photovoltaics are a non-starter on Titan.<p>* Some analog of wind or tidal power might be workable, but remember we&#x27;re talking about an ambient surface temperature down around 90 degrees Kelvin; the free energy in the atmosphere will be drastically lower than the equivalent on Earth (temperature on the order of 300 Kelvin).<p>* Forget hydrocarbon combustion (coal -- <i>snort</i>!) because there&#x27;s a slight lack of anything to combust it <i>with</i>.<p>* This leaves nuclear as the sole reasonable option for powering a Titan colony, which opens up a raft of other questions: if Fission, then what is the abundance of 235U or 232Th on Titan, and how accessible are the necessary isotopes? And if Fusion, well, first we need to demonstrate a working base-load producing fusion reactor here on Earth.<p>* Let&#x27;s also bear in mind that a thick atmospheric blanket of mostly nitrogen at 90 Kelvins is, shall we say, a little bit chilly, and the ground any human-occupied base is built on will be a mere hundred Kelvins lower than the lowest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica, and we&#x27;re going to need a <i>lot</i> of energy just to keep from freezing. (Also note that any significant human presence there is going to end up pumping out so much heat pollution that there may be eventual weather disturbances as a result.)<p>It&#x27;s a bit like imagining how hypothetical Venusians might build a colony on Earth, with their requirement for pressurized habitat domes kept at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit (in American units).<p>Disclaimer: I am not a planetary scientist, I&#x27;m just a science fiction writer who thinks about how this sort of thing looks from 30,000 feet rather than trying to quantify it with enough precision to justify a research grant. But I still think balloons in the atmosphere of Venus or tunnels drilled into the walls of Valles Marineris make more sense.