56 ms·

Let's Colonize Titan

521 points by aburan28 10y ago

Beltiras 10y ago
They succeeded better in convincing me that there are no habitable choices in the solar system than Titan being the obvious choice. Mars will probably be our next destination as the best-fit of several ill-fitting choices. We need a propulsion revolution to reach Titan.
romanr 10y ago
> On Earth, we are shielded from GCRs by water in the atmosphere. But it takes two meters of water to block half of the GCRs present in unprotected space. Practically, a Moon or Mars settlement would have to be built underground to be safe from this > Underground shelter is hard to build and not flexible or easy to expand. Settlers would need enormous excavations for room to supply all their needs for food, manufacturing and daily life. We ask why they would go to that trouble. We can live underground on Earth. What’s the advantage to doing so on Mars? It's never seriously discussed, are they expect to live full time underground on Mars? Why then? We can live same way on Earth.. Does Elon Musk knows something we don't?
- nkuttler 10y ago
  > Why then? Because it's a different planet.
- JorgeGT 10y ago
  Elon views Mars colonization not as a way to solve lack of habitation space in Earth, but as an off-premises security backup should something terrible happen on Earth.
  - w-ll 10y ago
    If we were to invest in building a underwater 'Sealab' on the bottom of some ocean floor, say at least 100m water deep, what kind of cataclysmic event could destroy it. A few dozen of the underwater sea-colonies seams the most practical safety net for humanity that we can do today. I completely for exploring and colonizing space, but we still haven't mapped our own oceans fully. And sadly, I don't think my generation, or even the next few will be any closer to being able to get ourselves off this rock. If you are looking to build 'Arks' for humanity, i'd put my money on the ocean floor.
    - fnord123 10y ago
      >If we were to invest in building a underwater 'Sealab' on the bottom of some ocean floor, say at least 100m water deep, what kind of cataclysmic event could destroy it. Maybe a sinking ship landing on the dome might be a problem. Or depth charges dropped during war. It would be considerably more difficult to destroy a colony on Mars through physical intervention, intentional or not. ... hacking in and opening all airlocks and evicting all oxygen, like fire suppression systems, on the other hand...
  - grkvlt 10y ago
    Off topic, sorry; but why do you use his first name only here? Normally we would refer to minor public figures like him as 'Elon Musk' or just 'Musk'. Using someone's first name is reserved for personal friends. I have also seen this with Linus Torvalds, for example, and Linux aficionados. It seems like there is an exception for some people, perhaps it just has to do with popularity within a segment of the population, in the same manner as pop stars become mononymic to the general public?
    - JorgeGT 10y ago
      Hm it's a good question. Maybe because my native tongue is Spanish, we almost never use the full name after the person has been already named (we have long full names...) so we tend to stick with a mononym in conversation. Usually the surname but sometimes the name, if it's uncommon enough, or even a nickname.
    - photogrammetry 10y ago
      One's surname is omitted when it's been stated already. If they're a public figure being discussed in an academic or press setting, yes, usually the last name is used. In less formal circumstances, it's perfectly acceptable to use first names only, especially when they're as uncommon as his. The sort of proper-name forcing that you suggest is better gets really obnoxious in interviews when the interviewer continually addresses the interviewee by their full name. e.g. >So, Elon Musk, what do you think about Blue Origin's rocket design? >That was a really great answer! Elon Musk, do you spend most of your time at Tesla or SpaceX? >Elon Musk! Elon Musk! ... etc.
      - grkvlt 10y ago
        Sure, that's why you use the surname instead. In interviews I can see the need for informality, so first names are fine there, but when commenting on an interview or story I think it's better to return to the formal, surname only, references. > So, Elon, what do you think of Blue Origin's colour scheme? >> I think Musk's response to the interviewer's stupid question about colours was interesting. >>> I like Muskrats.
    - 10y ago
Entangled 10y ago
Terraform the moon. I want to look up to the skies and see a green moon every night. It is unfortunate we haven't spent a dime settling a moon base and studying the possibilities of creating a livable atmosphere on the moon being just a couple days away.
- gnarbarian 10y ago
  The moon doesn't have enough mass (gravity) to keep an atmosphere suitable for us there.
  - usrusr 10y ago
    Trap it in a giant plastic bag ;) Yaysayers will always find an excuse why something they don't like to be impossible isn't. "But the Wright Brothers!" and all that...
    - XorNot 10y ago
      Honestly why not? If you start from the premise of domed cities, then the expansion pattern pretty obviously says glassing in the entire moon is the natural end result of that. The lower-gravity drastically reduces your requirements, and the regolith can be fused into glass and moved a 100m up to form the roof. It also reduces your energy requirements long term because you can use mirrors at the roof-level to reflect sunlight around the entire surface to avoid a 2-week night-time cycle, and adding an atmosphere means you "naturally" can keep it warm. Since the pressure would be exerted outwards, the entire structure would be mostly self-supporting - requirements would lean towards figuring out how to repair it in the event of meteorite impacts, but self-sealing plastic layers could be developed.
      - usrusr 10y ago
        Well, impacts. I suppose that a vertical hit at interplanetary speeds (or earth-orbit speeds, that high up) will leave a nicely clean hole, but think of the enormous cut made by something coming in on a trajectory that would slingshot close to the moon surface if the bubble wasn't there. Sure, with technology indistinguishable from magic you could still do it, but i don't known if there would still be much incentive for building the bubble left in that case.
donatj 10y ago
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.
- techer 10y ago
  Never is a long time. We obviously have to somehow mutate our physiology somehow, or make hyper-giant leaps in technology. Something for near-to-far future generations to think about really.
- gkafkg8y8 10y ago
  The main two reasons we wouldn't settle anything beyond Earth would be: 1. Lack of interest. 2. Lack of time. #1 is the biggest problem as far as we know right now. #2 is a problem only if we destroy our planet to the point where we can't expend resources or time, or we overpopulate and run out of resources, or a natural disaster sets us back too far or kills us. We have sufficient resources right now, we're just not focused on the effort enough. If every government said, "You, need to change what you are doing and start helping us get off of this planet," and changed laws and regulations to encourage or enforce this, it would happen. Is that realistic? Not really. That's the reason that Musk and others are focusing so much on space. Because, if they don't do it, then who?
  - babyrainbow 10y ago
    >If every government said, "You, need to change what you are doing and start helping us get off of this planet," and changed laws and regulations to encourage or enforce this, it would happen. Would't be better if they tried to "fix the planet" instead? Boring, I know. But much more easier and possible and most importantly, proper.
    - gkafkg8y8 10y ago
      > Would't be better if they tried to "fix the planet" instead? It would be, but based on what I hear, it's too late. Also, you can't easily keep Earth from being hit by a giant meteor or a large CME that takes out all of our electronics and sends us back to the bronze age.
seszett 10y ago
> It might be possible to live suspended by balloons high in Venus’s atmosphere, but we can’t see how such a habitation would ever be self-sustaining. I think they're a bit too dismissive here. I'm a great fan of the colonisation of Venus, and don't really see a problem with self-sustaining stations in a place with pressures and temperatures naturally fit for humans, with lots of sunlight for energy and lots of CO2. After all, as long as there is plenty of energy, carbon, and oxygen, we should be able to synthesise mostly whatever we want.
- pavanky 10y ago
  Ever since I heard about the proposal for floating cities on Venus, I have been a fan. There may be higher risks with floating cities initially, but considering the proximity of Venus from Earth, I think we can afford to trial (on robots or Humans for shorter periods of time) more often than say Mars, Europa or Titan.
- maze-le 10y ago
  One problem might be the sulfuric acid rains. The SO2-cloud layer is well above the '1 atm'-isobar level (~50km). So we would need building materials that are resistant to sulfuric acid. But other than that I also find the idea highly fascinating.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    Is it possible to terraform the SO2-clouds in to something more benign?
    - Retra 10y ago
      Like what? You've got three atoms in that molecule. Not many other stable configurations to work with.
      - lmm 10y ago
        Precipitate out the sulphur, leave it as oxygen? Not that oxygen is objectively benign, but we're used to dealing with oxygen atmospheres.
philip142au 10y ago
This article has no good reasons for Titan, it doesn't discuss water, it doesn't discuss energy or how to grow food. It says that because you can fly there and there are dunes and a liquid surface in some places its like Earth, but that doesn't help us to survive at all. To survive we need water, food and energy. How are we going to get that from Titan as opposed to Mars?
- ubercow13 10y ago
  It discusses two out of three of those things explicitly
- pavlov 10y ago
  Water and energy are discussed briefly: 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. Travel difficulties aside, endless piles of hydrocarbons lying around ready to be used by people who don't need to wear pressure suits sounds like a good reason to go to Titan instead of Mars... But I get the feeling that the authors are way too optimistic about humans surviving on Titan with "warm clothing and respirators".
  - KnightEternal 10y ago
    Regarding the "warm clothing" that'll withstand -180C: that's one hell of a scarf they've got there
  - gus_massa 10y ago
    Actually the sentence you copied is so wrong from the chemical/energetic point of view that it paints the rest of the article very unrealialable. Read the comment by stcredzero: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051651
  - philip142au 10y ago
    The amount of industrial equipment you would need to get there to extract ice, warm it to water, split and then burn oxygen with hydrocarbons and get enough useful energy, even if you can get enough useful energy, it would be more like a small factory. You may as well have a nuclear reactor on Mars.
kqr2 10y ago
Here are some good arguments for colonizing Mercury: http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html
- Tepix 10y ago
  Interesting. The strong radiation and long travel time make this even more problematic than a 3-6 month trip away from the Sun to Mars, however.
cstross 10y ago
They almost had me until ... 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. Riiiight. And you're going to get the power to electrolytically split that water into hydrogen and oxygen where, exactly? (Whoever wrote that piece forgot that water is one of the end products of combusting hydrocarbons with oxygen, not a starting point. Basic physical chemistry and thermodynamics.) Let's go through the energy budget of a Titan colony point by point: * 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're used to (per my skimming of this source: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/nov_2007_meeting/presentations/solar_power.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/nov_2007_meeting/presentations/... ), and that's before we factor in the murkily opaque atmosphere; I infer that photovoltaics are a non-starter on Titan. * Some analog of wind or tidal power might be workable, but remember we'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). * Forget hydrocarbon combustion (coal -- snort!) because there's a slight lack of anything to combust it with. * 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. * Let'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're going to need a lot 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.) It'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). Disclaimer: I am not a planetary scientist, I'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.
mirekrusin 10y ago
Does the colony really need to be on the planet? Why not start on the orbit? We already do it to some extent, can't we try to grow it? Is the spinning disk ok for artificial gravity or the diameter would have to be extremely large? Another alternative could be floating, suspended or at the bottom of the ocean colony. It's like doing test driven development.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  radiation exposure becomes an issue on the longer term in space.
  - w-ll 10y ago
    If we were to invest in building a underwater 'Sealab' on the bottom of some ocean floor, say at least 100m water deep, what kind of cataclysmic event could destroy it. A few dozen of the underwater sea-colonies seams the most practical safety net for humanity that we can do today. I completely for exploring and colonizing space, but we still haven't mapped our own oceans fully. And sadly, I don't think my generation, or even the next few will be any closer to being able to get ourselves off this rock. If you are looking to build 'Arks' for humanity, i'd put my money on the ocean floor.
    - sliken 10y ago
      If there's a nuke war, anything nuke resistant would likely be directly targeted. After all last thing your enemy wants is for the earth to be repopulated by their enemy.
      - vbezhenar 10y ago
        Is it hard to nuke Mars or Titan? Looks the same for me. Deploy nukes in the Mars orbit and destroy colony if needed.
    - mrfusion 10y ago
      We sort of already have this. Nuclear submarines. I wonder if they've ever planned for repopulating the earth? They should carry frozen embryos on board.
agentgt 10y ago
I am probably completely wrong but it seem easier and perhaps more fruitful to build the proper shielding in a station/ship and build a network up in one of the asteroid belts.
- neolefty 10y ago
  I love this chart: Delta-V required for various solar system destinations: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/534ylb/elon_musk_on_twitter_turns_out_mct_can_go_well/d7q35pp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/534ylb/elon_musk_on...
hereonbusiness 10y ago
We expect human nature to stay the same. Human beings of the future will have the same drives and needs we have now. Practically speaking, their home must have abundant energy, livable temperatures and protection from the rigors of space, including cosmic radiation, which new research suggests is unavoidably dangerous for biological beings like us I would expect the complete opposite if we really want to colonize the solar system at some point. It seems far easier to modify/replace the human body than to try to suit all it's biological needs.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  probably faster and cheaper to create human like machines In the near term that have none of the problems we have living in harsher environments.
  - gulpahum 10y ago
    Exactly! That's why I think we should keep building better AI. It'll be AI, which will be traveling out to the stars, not humans. We could send a probe to a star and once it reaches it, we could simply beam the AI using a transmitter to the probe. Once AI has done its work there, it can be beamed back to Earth (it there is need for that). Build a network of probes and AI can travel between stars at light speed!
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
      Creation of AI is not without its own risks to humanity.
      - ekianjo 10y ago
        Not sure what you mean. If we create sentient AI, why dont you consider them to be as human as their creators? It's a matter of philosophy in the end.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  Yes, modifying humans to adapt better to different gravities, air pressures, ambient light levels and color, temperature, day length, etc., could make colonization much more practical. Realistically, going to other planets/moons will be one way trips anyway, might as well make the most of it.
cesis 10y ago
Weird article. Why excavation on Mars would be a problem?
- mikebelanger 10y ago
  Presumably it would be energy intensive, especially at Mars' temperatures.
sgentle 10y ago
So, the argument is let's not go to Mars because we'd have to deal with cosmic rays. Instead, let's go to Titan, which has an atmosphere, but is ridiculously cold and rains methane. Also, we can't go there because it's nearly thirty times the distance. Plus we'd still have to deal with cosmic rays along the way. I'm not convinced.
- eganist 10y ago
  Yup. Frankly, if you can solve the cosmic ray problem for the journey to Titan, you also just solved it for colonizing Mars. Martian gravity is also closer to Earth's, so Mars still seems like the better fit in the immediate term.
  - IndianAstronaut 10y ago
    A penny sized hole in a space suit on Mars could mean a quick death. The lack of an atmosphere on Mars would make it exceedingly difficult to set up a colony there.
    - Eerie 10y ago
      >A penny sized hole in a space suit on Mars could mean a quick death. Also true for Titan (surface temperature -179 degrees Celsius).
      - jonahrd 10y ago
        thermodynamics isn't instant like that, and you'd be dressing in layers. It's much different than a hole in a pressurized suit
    - rocky1138 10y ago
      Mars has an atmosphere, it's just not breathable by any life form from Earth.
  - sliken 10y ago
    Mars has way more sunlight (much closer to the sun and a much thinner atmosphere), which makes solar much easier. So equipment, supplies, and solar could be on the surface, and the radiation sensitive humans could be a few meters underground. As you mine for water you could dump the useless stuff on the surface and use the emptied space for living quarters. Question is why live somewhere that's tougher than the top of MT Everest or either pole? Guess a population big enough to repopulate earth in case of an extinction level event would be a reasonable safeguard.
sytelus 10y ago
If we ever get to fusion or other unlimited energy source, it may be possible someday to thoroughly transform Titan, relocate 100,000 people on it and flung it in to space to another star. Titan can be our "generational spaceship" that goes forever to infinity and beyond. To colonize galaxy, using moons as spaceship would be necessary assuming there is no way to travel faster than speed of light. So all inter-galactic spaceships needs to be generational, completely self-sufficient in every possible way and have enough population that can evolve without too much of inbreeding for thousands of years.
- jp555 10y ago
  That's making a lot of assumptions though. For one thing, I think to become an interstellar species, we'll have to direct the evolution of Homo sapiens into some kind of Homo exteriores spatium sapiens. Radiation-hardened, very very long lived, happy to live together in very tight spaces, etc. Might look closer to giant cockroaches than hairless apes. It certainly seems we're a lot closer to the ability to do this (eg. CRISPR-Cas9) than colonize & move a moon.
oska 10y ago
> On Earth, we are shielded from GCRs by water in the atmosphere. But it takes two meters of water to block half of the GCRs present in unprotected space. Build a double-skinned geodesic dome with a 4 metre gap between the two shells. Fill the space between with water. Your 'sky' now has a water-shielding layer.
- ajuc 10y ago
  1 square meter of such roof would weight 4 tonnes (on Earth). 500 kg on Titan. That's quite a roof.
  - patall 10y ago
    yeah, but it scales cubical. If you build your station 8 times as big and only need 2 times the material. So million people colonies become cheaper per person wise. Plus you might be able to grow algea in there.
  - neolefty 10y ago
    Also, it will be frozen solid; in a dome shape it could support itself. Construction: Start with a solid dome, layer water/fiber composite on from the outside, then remove the solid dome from the inside?
    - ajuc 10y ago
      So, Mars colonists will be living in iglos :)
- sliken 10y ago
  Seems hard to build, energy intensive, labor intensive, and materials intensive. Just land, start mining, and use the space left behind. Not to mention a few meter of earth is going to handle damage way better than a geodesic dome.
  - natural219 10y ago
    well, a few meter of "titan"
deleted 10y ago
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bitL 10y ago
Alright, so currently we can't even predict how bad osteoporosis becomes after a flight to Mars (will astronauts break their hips on the first step out of landing module?), what would radiation exposure outside Earth's magnetosphere do to our bodies, yet we should hurry up to Titan. Currently even human space flight to Mars is a pipe dream, our practical knowledge constructing vehicles capable of reaching Moon and sustaining human life deteriorated (still using Soviet engines from the 60s?), not mentioning reaching Mars which is way way farther than Moon (50M-400M km vs 380k km, 130-1050x farther). Overcoming this would require massive undertaking of all humanity, like with LHC, and not just PR from SpaceX to secure their funding.
- 77pt77 10y ago
  > Overcoming this would require massive undertaking of all humanity, like with LHC I don't think this is a fair comparison. The LHC while an amazing feat was not complex, in the sense that it was a well defined and very bounded project. Interplanetary travel is such an open project that just defining the relevant problems is in itself much harder than the LHC, let alone solving them.
- amelius 10y ago
  > Alright, so currently we can't even predict how bad osteoporosis becomes after a flight to Mars On a trip to Mars, I think gravity is not the problem. We can perfectly generate gravity by e.g. sending two modules instead of one, linking them by rods or cables, and then rotating them on the central axis, while sending them forward. Changing gravity on Titan, of course, is a different problem, although at least Titan is lighter than Earth.
- sfifs 10y ago
  Actually I think the big issue is expense and willingness to fund the expense. There are reasonably straightforward engineering solutions to most of the problems that have been tested for a while (gravity from teethered capsules was tested in the 60s as I recall; Radiation shielding is straightforward with sufficient quantities of water, power through naval submarine type nuclear reactors etc). The problem is these would require massive amounts of mass to be lifted out of our gravity well through rocketry & willingness to fund with potentially insignificant returns doesn't really exist, though I believe some significant fraction of the American military budget should be sufficient. Don't forget that as early as 50 years ago - an era almost primitive by standards of technology available today - given enough money, a number of men visited the moon.
zyngaro 10y ago
Or let's spend all this money and energy keep earth a safe and livable place to be.
- macintux 10y ago
  Did you actually read the article to its conclusion?
  - zyngaro 10y ago
    Yes I did.
wowoc 10y ago
The article says that the water ice could be used as a source of oxygen, needed to power the combustion of hydrocarbons as fuel. But the oxygen is trapped in water molecules, wouldn't it need to be freed from the hydrogen atoms first (which requires energy)?
- FreeFull 10y ago
  I have looked it up, and it seems the combustion of methane produces more energy than the combustion of hydrogen. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen won't be 100% efficient though, and neither will be turning heat into useful energy, so I don't know if you'll still be energy-positive in the end.
  - sidek 10y ago
    More realistic might be a long-term preparation scenario in which we send a first wave of robots to set up some solar panels and run them to store H2 and O2 for a couple of decades. We won't have gained energy necessarily, but we will have stored it in large enough amounts that early colonisation will have extra energy if it needs it.
lolive 10y ago
It is much easier to send on Titan a bunch of seaweeds, various seeds, etc. And let an ecosystem eventually arise by itself. Of course, we should send some bibles too. So the Titan creatures can learn who/what their mighty creator is. Amen.
graycat 10y ago
Good idea! There are some people I would encourage to go on the first trip!
camillomiller 10y ago
If you really want to read some interesting and literary valuable sci-fi about Titan, then read Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan". :) https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Titan-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385333498/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480257192&sr=8-1&keywords=sirens+of+titan https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Titan-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0...
- avian 10y ago
  Another sci-fi novel about a manned mission to Titan is Stephen Baxter's Titan. It's somewhat depressing though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Baxter_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Baxter_novel)
- peatmoss 10y ago
  Also feels very different compared to other Vonnegut. Definitely more sci-fi feel than social commentary as in his later books. Sirens of Titan aged better past my teen years than did, say, Slaughterhouse Five. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot that I love about later Vonnegut. But Sirens of Titan stands out as an early gem.
solarengineer 10y ago
This reminds me of Wanderers by Erik Wernquist [0]. [0] https://vimeo.com/108650530 https://vimeo.com/108650530 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6GY_PfjCQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6GY_PfjCQI Edit: at 2:34, see how Erik imagines people might fly in Methane environments.
nickparker 10y ago
This is exceedingly silly. Saturn's magnetosphere concentrates radiation primarily on Enceladus, Dione, and surprise surprise: Titan. The atmosphere doesn't mean much when you're under the cosmic equivalent of a magnifying glass.
- koheripbal 10y ago
  If a surface temperature of −179.5 °C isn't enough to stop someone, logic never will.
  - yummybear 10y ago
    “There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.” So remember your mittens, people.
    - 77pt77 10y ago
      How do you protect your eyes? Serious question.
      - falcolas 10y ago
        Goggles work remarkably well down to -100, so pushing that form of technology further doesn't seem too impossible, especially if you add active heating. Look at how they protect people from the weather in Antarctica, and you'll see the prototypes which could be expanded upon to survive even colder weather.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - patall 10y ago
        You would always wear a full body suit. There are only two places in the solar system where the human body can survive for short time without any gear: Earth, ... and the upper parts of Venus atmosphere (lacking oxygen though)
- 10y ago
andrewfromx 10y ago
"Housing could be made of plastic produced from the unlimited resources harvested on the surface" drill baby drill? Plastic? Like petroleum based plastic? So we humans should move from planet to planet like locusts?
baron816 10y ago
I would still rather live on Earth after the worst case scenario for climate change or a nuclear war.
- corndoge 10y ago
  Wouldn't the worst case for climate change or nuclear war entail humanity's extinction?
  - kgabis 10y ago
    It would mean the end of current civilization, but I don't think getting rid of humans is that easy.
sneezeplease 10y ago
Articles like this are just pure mental masturbating over a model that isnt even possible. The earth is flat and the Universe isnt billions of light years across.
banach 10y ago
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 ecosystem and cut energy use to manageable levels. If we re-distribute our wealth, population growth will subside. If we put pressure on our rulers, they will work to eliminate the nuclear stockpiles. There are simple solutions to most of our issues. Once we have solved them, maybe we can start thinking about spreading our species to other places.
- jgrowl 10y ago
  I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. None of those are simple changes.
  - banach 10y ago
    I am not being sarcastic. Compared to terraforming, or even colonizing a planet to the point where it becomes a serious alternative to Earth, they are utterly trivial.
    - ivan_gammel 10y ago
      People are not going to abandon the Earth, so we have to protect it in all ways possible. But it's still not a reason for abandoning our advancement to space. We do have resources to move in both directions.
    - eganist 10y ago
      You're talking about philosophical and behavioral changes on a global and generational scale. Compared to those, scientific advancements in terraforming are positively trivial.
      - devoply 10y ago
aaron695 10y ago
Lets not fork the future of space travel please.
Koshkin 10y ago
In all likelihood, we will (continue to) be "colonizing" the virtual Universe, not the physical one. Look at all the advancements being made in VR, robotics, AI, and computer hardware. And considering that even putting a man on the Moon was - and still is - enormously difficult, I have a hard time imagining any progress being made here on any significant scale in the foreseeable future. I think it may be time to realize that an extrapolation into the future of the exponential progress that has been taking place in physics and other sciences may be not justified.
- Chathamization 10y ago
  Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised if we get brain uploads before we get a self-sustaining Mars Colony. At which point current efforts to colonize Mars would have the same impact on spreading humans throughout the universe as the Tower of Babel did in getting us to the moon.
tarr11 10y ago
Evolution is the obvious answer for how we move into hostile environments. Hardening the environment seems inefficient. Seveneves is a fun book that explores this concept. E.g., probably better to evolve a few new species who can live in orbit around the earth for a few thousand years. They'd have a better time with all these issues (radiation, resources, etc)
- veli_joza 10y ago
  Some scientists (Hawking, etc...) consider evolution to apply beyond biological context. In that sense, any usage of technology to solve this problem could also be considered evolution. As example, in Accelerando by Charles Stross, human consciousness is transfered into virtual reality environment and sent several light years away in a can-sized probe.
IndianAstronaut 10y ago
What is really needed first is rovers on Titan that can explore the lakes, ice deposits and possible geothermal energy there. We already know Enceladus, another of Saturn's moons, has abundant water and heating from Saturn's tidal pull.
jyriand 10y ago
Half joking, but how come we always gravitate toward exploring exterior space, but not our interior universe in the brain? "God" knows what we could find, once the brave psychonauts have returned from their mind trips. We might as well abandon traveling on mechanical starships and become star rovers ourselves, uploading our consciousness into fabric of space-time and exploring mythical worlds and archetypes that are inhabiting our minds still undiscovered.
cmurf 10y ago
The takeaway: "There is no quick way to move off the Earth. We will have to solve our problems here."
edem 10y ago
What about the effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity? Not to talk about the psychological effects of isolation and low light.
transfire 10y ago
This is silly. First we should build orbiting colonies, some that can fairy between the moon, mars and eventually other planets (I believe these are often called Cyclers). Solving the living condition issues in these colonies is actually easy -- they would be large rotating cylinders to provide artificial gravity (probably 1/2 g) and the outer perimeters would be water containment which is very good at blocking cosmic rays. A strong magnetic core could also provide some shielding.
Nomentatus 10y ago
But you can't export materials from it, thanks to that atmosphere: https://medium.com/@russellirvinjohnston/why-the-start-inhabiting-the-moon-and-not-mars-its-the-economy-stupid-2bd01c211fc0 https://medium.com/@russellirvinjohnston/why-the-start-inhab...
bigtunacan 10y ago
We struggle to get people to move to Iowa because of the cold winters. The record low of all time is -47F, but the average low for January (our coldest month) is around 11F. I don't see people signing up like crazy to move to Titan where they are trapped in doors all year round. I don't mean this as a joke either; considering mental issues like SADD and just general anxiety that many people suffer when trapped indoors, even in large spaces, for too long I think that solving the technical issues with moving to Titan will not be the hardest challenge to overcome.
- GFischer 10y ago
  People don't move to Iowa because it's Iowa. Compare to the northern European countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland), which have to hold back immigration, and have much harsher climate (Des Moines is much warmer than Oslo, for example). If economic conditions in Titan were similar to Norway, you wouldn't have a shortfall of migrants. Maybe U.S. citizens don't want to go there, but there's a significant percentage of the world population that will go anywhere where they can make money. https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Oslo,Norway https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Tem... https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Des-Moines,United-States-of-America https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Tem...
  - bigtunacan 10y ago
    You open with, "People don't move to Iowa because it's Iowa.", but then you say, "If economic conditions in Titan were similar to Norway, you wouldn't have a shortfall of migrants." As far as the US economy goes, Iowa is a great place to live. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation coupled with an extremely low cost of living relative to most areas in the US. Despite these great economic conditions we don't have a huge influx of people migrating to Iowa. As far as Norway goes; Norway has a fairly unique economic situation to the rest of the world due to their welfare system that is enabled by the profits coming from the vast amount of natural resources they are able to export. Considering the huge cost and resources that would be associated with colonizing a planet I don't see how they would have an economy that bears in resemblance to that of Norway for any foreseeable amount of time after colonization.
woogiewonka 10y ago
"It’s cold on Titan, at -180°C (-291°F), but thanks to its thick atmosphere, residents wouldn’t need pressure suits—just warm clothing and respirators." Sure, JUST warm clothing. I'd like to see the author step outside in -291F! How can this possibility be sustainable?
- rbanffy 10y ago
  Also keep in mind those "warm" clothes would keep residents at what locally would be rock-melting temperatures. It'd be like keeping hot lava lifeforms happy above Earth's surface.
Animats 10y ago
Face it, the off-earth real estate in this solar system really sucks.
jack9 10y ago
Who cares about a magenetosphere? Dig underground with water tanks lining the top and problem solved 100%. If you can't do that on Mars, you aren't going to survive Titan anyway. SMH scientific american.
Zigurd 10y ago
With the possible exception of underground colonies on Mars, it seems likelier, sooner, that humans will re-engineer themselves for long-duration space travel and life on other planets than we will engineer those planets to be livable for Earth-dwelling humans.
StreamBright 10y ago
There are lots of technical problems to be solved associated with space travel and colonising a new planet. SpaceX is trying to solve some of these but there are a lot of other problems not well know. Once we solved these we can move on to the more popular subjects like near light speed space travel. The problems to be solved: - how to reduce exposure to radiation (cosmic rays, GCRs) while traveling with a space ship - how to reduce exposure to radiation coming from space while living on a planet like Mars not having a magnetosphere "The health threat from cosmic rays is the danger posed by galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles to astronauts on interplanetary missions or any missions that venture through the Van-Allen Belts or outside the Earth's magnetosphere.[1][2] Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) consist of high energy protons (85%), helium (14%) and other high energy nuclei (HZE ions).[1] Solar energetic particles consist primarily of protons accelerated by the Sun to high energies via proximity to solar flares and coronal mass ejections. They are one of the most important barriers standing in the way of plans for interplanetary travel by crewed spacecraft." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays
johngalt 10y ago
What's the net energy on combusting hydrocarbon fuel when all your oxygen comes from breaking the oxygen bonded with H20? I'm betting it's not great.
- Roboprog 10y ago
  Negative. But storing liquid H2 is hard, vs (CH2)n. Carrying around O2 and Propane is easier than putting a nuke on wheels.
natch 10y ago
"Humans" is a huge and ultimately quaint assumption in some of these discussions. Any such expansion to other planets will be happening in the same time frame that we get robots or embodied artificial intelligence, whatever you want to call it, with capabilities on par with and then beyond humans. In the context of interplanetary expansion, there are not a lot of reasons that these future organisms need to be restricted to living only in human-friendly environments. I'm all for efforts to expand human life to other viable places, but also it's time to enlarge the discussion.
tehchromic 10y ago
I find the "colonize other planets" dream of the secular/scientific community to be most like the "you'll go to heaven when you die" idea in religious paradoxy. You would think we might have experimented with teraforming uninhabitable place here on earth - the bottom of the Mariana, or Death Valley. If that was a snap, then we might contemplate Moon or Mars or Titan. But in fact we are systematically rendering our own planet uninhabitable. Our planet is the product of billions of years of biological teraformation that has created the narrow and extremely specialized spectrum of environmental factors in which we live comfortably. It is far easier to eat that up than it is to replicate it. The answer is to drop our extreme hubris and misguided religious style escapism and instead develop some respect for planet e, and proceed with extreme caution moving forward, or we will find our own planet unfit for living on. Not saying interplanetary travel isn't possible, however I strongly disagree with the statement in the article that 'humanity will remain the same' and adapt our environment to suit us. If we make it to other planets we will be so altered we will not recognize ourselves. IMO that's a long loooong way off and requires that we don't extinct ourselves in the meantime.
- overgard 10y ago
  This is such a weird argument. You're basically saying "our political wisdom has not caught up to our technological prowess, so we should avoid undertaking this great technological challenge." It just doesn't follow. If the 20th century taught us anything it's that technology doesn't wait for politics to catch up. If anything technology tends to drive political change (for better and worse), and so the notion that great projects should wait for some political utopia before proceeding is disconnected from reality.
  - tehchromic 10y ago
    I actually agree with you. I think that chasing dreams and visions, ie "the afterlife" is a better motivator than scolding and regulating ourselves. Even so, I think at the level of intellect and organizational administration, it's important to have the line between reality and fiction extremely clear, so I don't mind saying so.
- 10y ago
rm445 10y ago
There's something that never seems to be mentioned in articles on making decisions for planet colonisation based on cosmic radiation: humanity is already trying like crazy to defeat cancer, for the obvious reason that it kills people here on Earth as well. It might sound utopian to suggest that one day we'll just take our anti-cancer pills and not worry about it, but when we're talking colonisation potentially a couple of hundred years ahead, it shouldn't be discounted. (The point in this article about damage to brain tissue is interesting, but again, that's not something that medical research here on Earth will be neglecting).
- mnw21cam 10y ago
  Problem is that cancer is not just one disease - it is about two hundred different types. I'm not sure I want to take two hundred different anti-cancer pills every day.
samstave 10y ago
Serious question(s): (TL;DR a robot version of Matt Damon in The Martian?) Are there any efforts for fully automated robotic enviroment creation (I dont know the term, not terraforming) -- but sending a robot that will build a structure, then another which will fill it with soil, then atmosphere, then harvest, test, distill whatever ice we can to create water and then grow plants? Obviously this is a lot of effort and would take a global team to put such a sequence together and likely take 100 years, but is anyone (aside from figuring out the pre-req's to actually get to mars) trying to do this? What is different between Mars and the Moon with respect to testing such robots on the moon first? Why are we focused on Mars and Titan when we have an extra-terrestrial body that is so much closer to us? Why has Elon Musk focused on Mars as opposed to the Moon first? Talk about A/B testing, we have much more rapid development of capabilities on the Moon, do we not?
dimitar 10y ago
I appreciate that the article points out at the end: "There is no quick way to move off the Earth. We will have to solve our problems here." Solving the climate change and other ecological issues we face here is surely easier than colonizing other planetary bodies.
- ImTalking 10y ago
  The problems we have on this planet are not technological issues but social issues. And social issues are much harder to solve.
stcredzero 10y ago
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 dense than storing hydrogen. The weak gravity—similar to the Moon’s—combined with the thick atmosphere would allow individuals to aviate with wings on their backs. If the wings fall off, no worry, landing will be easy. Terminal velocity on Titan is a tenth that found on the Earth. A 12 mph collision with solid rock or packed dirt is survivable, given the proper technique or circumstances. It's also still potentially fatal.
- jjtheblunt 10y ago
  wouldn't the same weak gravity imply less dense atmosphere to support wings, evening out?
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    Not necessarily. Titan's atmosphere is actually denser than Earth's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan
    - s_q_b 10y ago
      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 on Earth.
      - wallace_f 10y ago
        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.
throwaway98237 10y ago
The point of going to Mars is to give humanity a plan b, not as a vacation with lots of hiking and other outdoor leisure stuff. Considering how much time an Earthling spends indoors, it's not a huge leap to spend all of one's time indoors. Building underground and staying inside. There, problem solved. Makes a whole lot more sense than making our first attempt at colonizing a whole new would at the distances we'd be looking at with Titan.
throwbsidbdk 10y ago
This is rediculous. I would take a vacuum any day over an atmosphere that's -300°!!! And it's thicker than earth so the thermal problem will be even worse. It's probably harder to insulate these crazy temps than protect from a vacuum.
rocky1138 10y ago
I love the idea of colonizing other worlds, but it hardly seems realistic to make such grandiose plans for a place we've never landed rovers or other equipment successfully.
- eponeponepon 10y ago
  We have landed successfully on Titan - we even took a photo or two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)#/media/File:Huygens_surface_color_sr.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)#/media/Fi...
  - rocky1138 10y ago
    Oh! Interesting. I stand corrected.
rocky1138 10y ago
I love the idea of colonizing other worlds, but it hardly seems realistic to make such grandiose plans for a place we've never landed rovers or other equipment successfully.
owly 10y ago
How about colonizing Earth with like minded people who are dedicated to saving it?
- arikrak 10y ago
  What will you do with everyone else? Sounds like they may cause problems. I think to save Earth we'll need to eliminate those who aren't like minded... "Quick unplug the AI, it's gone bad!"
  - owly 10y ago
    AI may be a better option to save us at this point.
brownbat 10y ago
I would like to read a serious scientific case for the pros/cons of colonizing the sea floor so I can have it on standby, as a comparative baseline for these sorts of pieces.
deleted 10y ago
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ImTalking 10y ago
I think the present research into the colonisation of other planets is too slow to ultimately help mankind. Our resource and climate problems on this planet will cause serious issues within the next 100 years. Personally, I think we should pour all our research into the quantum world. Finally understanding the quantum world will have a tremendous impact on mankind; the quantum computers would have unimaginable power and capabilities; we may be able to harness the quantum world for unlimited clean energy with progress already being done; we could understand the wave and particle duality so that we could 'convert' ourselves to wavefunctions and travel at the speed of light rather than the paltry speeds of today; and ultimately we could eliminate our physical forms and immerse ourselves in the quantum world as wavefunctions (a la Lucy) which would then remove any physical requirements such as location, resources, etc. I think this is more plausible and near-term than physically uprooting ourselves to another planet using incremental scientific advancements. The survival of our species may require, as Neil Armstrong said, a giant leap.
- adrianN 10y ago
  Space colonization never was about changing things on Earth. We will ~never be able to send a meaningful number of people to other planets, so no environmental problems on Earth will be solved, except perhaps by proxy via improved technology. Quantum computers are also way less cool than popsci makes them look. Unless you want to do quantum mechanical simulations or factor prime numbers, normal computers are fine.
jiltedfrog 10y ago
"Imperial Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke, deals with human colonization of Titan.
kriptonic 10y ago
Does anyone know more about the recent research into galactic cosmic rays? I believe the article has it completely wrong, but I'm not sure.

521 points by aburan28 10y ago

They succeeded better in convincing me that there are no habitable choices in the solar system than Titan being the obvious choice. Mars will probably be our next destination as the best-fit of several ill-fitting choices. We need a propulsion revolution to reach Titan.

romanr 10y ago

> On Earth, we are shielded from GCRs by water in the atmosphere. But it takes two meters of water to block half of the GCRs present in unprotected space. Practically, a Moon or Mars settlement would have to be built underground to be safe from this > Underground shelter is hard to build and not flexible or easy to expand. Settlers would need enormous excavations for room to supply all their needs for food, manufacturing and daily life. We ask why they would go to that trouble. We can live underground on Earth. What’s the advantage to doing so on Mars? It's never seriously discussed, are they expect to live full time underground on Mars? Why then? We can live same way on Earth.. Does Elon Musk knows something we don't?

nkuttler 10y ago
> Why then? Because it's a different planet.
JorgeGT 10y ago
Elon views Mars colonization not as a way to solve lack of habitation space in Earth, but as an off-premises security backup should something terrible happen on Earth.
- w-ll 10y ago
  If we were to invest in building a underwater 'Sealab' on the bottom of some ocean floor, say at least 100m water deep, what kind of cataclysmic event could destroy it. A few dozen of the underwater sea-colonies seams the most practical safety net for humanity that we can do today. I completely for exploring and colonizing space, but we still haven't mapped our own oceans fully. And sadly, I don't think my generation, or even the next few will be any closer to being able to get ourselves off this rock. If you are looking to build 'Arks' for humanity, i'd put my money on the ocean floor.
  - fnord123 10y ago
    >If we were to invest in building a underwater 'Sealab' on the bottom of some ocean floor, say at least 100m water deep, what kind of cataclysmic event could destroy it. Maybe a sinking ship landing on the dome might be a problem. Or depth charges dropped during war. It would be considerably more difficult to destroy a colony on Mars through physical intervention, intentional or not. ... hacking in and opening all airlocks and evicting all oxygen, like fire suppression systems, on the other hand...
- grkvlt 10y ago
  Off topic, sorry; but why do you use his first name only here? Normally we would refer to minor public figures like him as 'Elon Musk' or just 'Musk'. Using someone's first name is reserved for personal friends. I have also seen this with Linus Torvalds, for example, and Linux aficionados. It seems like there is an exception for some people, perhaps it just has to do with popularity within a segment of the population, in the same manner as pop stars become mononymic to the general public?
  - JorgeGT 10y ago
    Hm it's a good question. Maybe because my native tongue is Spanish, we almost never use the full name after the person has been already named (we have long full names...) so we tend to stick with a mononym in conversation. Usually the surname but sometimes the name, if it's uncommon enough, or even a nickname.
  - photogrammetry 10y ago
    One's surname is omitted when it's been stated already. If they're a public figure being discussed in an academic or press setting, yes, usually the last name is used. In less formal circumstances, it's perfectly acceptable to use first names only, especially when they're as uncommon as his. The sort of proper-name forcing that you suggest is better gets really obnoxious in interviews when the interviewer continually addresses the interviewee by their full name. e.g. >So, Elon Musk, what do you think about Blue Origin's rocket design? >That was a really great answer! Elon Musk, do you spend most of your time at Tesla or SpaceX? >Elon Musk! Elon Musk! ... etc.
    - grkvlt 10y ago
      Sure, that's why you use the surname instead. In interviews I can see the need for informality, so first names are fine there, but when commenting on an interview or story I think it's better to return to the formal, surname only, references. > So, Elon, what do you think of Blue Origin's colour scheme? >> I think Musk's response to the interviewer's stupid question about colours was interesting. >>> I like Muskrats.
  - 10y ago

Entangled 10y ago

Terraform the moon. I want to look up to the skies and see a green moon every night. It is unfortunate we haven't spent a dime settling a moon base and studying the possibilities of creating a livable atmosphere on the moon being just a couple days away.

gnarbarian 10y ago
The moon doesn't have enough mass (gravity) to keep an atmosphere suitable for us there.
- usrusr 10y ago
  Trap it in a giant plastic bag ;) Yaysayers will always find an excuse why something they don't like to be impossible isn't. "But the Wright Brothers!" and all that...
  - XorNot 10y ago
    Honestly why not? If you start from the premise of domed cities, then the expansion pattern pretty obviously says glassing in the entire moon is the natural end result of that. The lower-gravity drastically reduces your requirements, and the regolith can be fused into glass and moved a 100m up to form the roof. It also reduces your energy requirements long term because you can use mirrors at the roof-level to reflect sunlight around the entire surface to avoid a 2-week night-time cycle, and adding an atmosphere means you "naturally" can keep it warm. Since the pressure would be exerted outwards, the entire structure would be mostly self-supporting - requirements would lean towards figuring out how to repair it in the event of meteorite impacts, but self-sealing plastic layers could be developed.
    - usrusr 10y ago
      Well, impacts. I suppose that a vertical hit at interplanetary speeds (or earth-orbit speeds, that high up) will leave a nicely clean hole, but think of the enormous cut made by something coming in on a trajectory that would slingshot close to the moon surface if the bubble wasn't there. Sure, with technology indistinguishable from magic you could still do it, but i don't known if there would still be much incentive for building the bubble left in that case.

donatj 10y ago

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.

techer 10y ago
Never is a long time. We obviously have to somehow mutate our physiology somehow, or make hyper-giant leaps in technology. Something for near-to-far future generations to think about really.
gkafkg8y8 10y ago
The main two reasons we wouldn't settle anything beyond Earth would be: 1. Lack of interest. 2. Lack of time. #1 is the biggest problem as far as we know right now. #2 is a problem only if we destroy our planet to the point where we can't expend resources or time, or we overpopulate and run out of resources, or a natural disaster sets us back too far or kills us. We have sufficient resources right now, we're just not focused on the effort enough. If every government said, "You, need to change what you are doing and start helping us get off of this planet," and changed laws and regulations to encourage or enforce this, it would happen. Is that realistic? Not really. That's the reason that Musk and others are focusing so much on space. Because, if they don't do it, then who?
- babyrainbow 10y ago
  >If every government said, "You, need to change what you are doing and start helping us get off of this planet," and changed laws and regulations to encourage or enforce this, it would happen. Would't be better if they tried to "fix the planet" instead? Boring, I know. But much more easier and possible and most importantly, proper.
  - gkafkg8y8 10y ago
    > Would't be better if they tried to "fix the planet" instead? It would be, but based on what I hear, it's too late. Also, you can't easily keep Earth from being hit by a giant meteor or a large CME that takes out all of our electronics and sends us back to the bronze age.

seszett 10y ago

> It might be possible to live suspended by balloons high in Venus’s atmosphere, but we can’t see how such a habitation would ever be self-sustaining. I think they're a bit too dismissive here. I'm a great fan of the colonisation of Venus, and don't really see a problem with self-sustaining stations in a place with pressures and temperatures naturally fit for humans, with lots of sunlight for energy and lots of CO2. After all, as long as there is plenty of energy, carbon, and oxygen, we should be able to synthesise mostly whatever we want.

pavanky 10y ago
Ever since I heard about the proposal for floating cities on Venus, I have been a fan. There may be higher risks with floating cities initially, but considering the proximity of Venus from Earth, I think we can afford to trial (on robots or Humans for shorter periods of time) more often than say Mars, Europa or Titan.
maze-le 10y ago
One problem might be the sulfuric acid rains. The SO2-cloud layer is well above the '1 atm'-isobar level (~50km). So we would need building materials that are resistant to sulfuric acid. But other than that I also find the idea highly fascinating.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Is it possible to terraform the SO2-clouds in to something more benign?
  - Retra 10y ago
    Like what? You've got three atoms in that molecule. Not many other stable configurations to work with.
    - lmm 10y ago
      Precipitate out the sulphur, leave it as oxygen? Not that oxygen is objectively benign, but we're used to dealing with oxygen atmospheres.

philip142au 10y ago

This article has no good reasons for Titan, it doesn't discuss water, it doesn't discuss energy or how to grow food. It says that because you can fly there and there are dunes and a liquid surface in some places its like Earth, but that doesn't help us to survive at all. To survive we need water, food and energy. How are we going to get that from Titan as opposed to Mars?

ubercow13 10y ago
It discusses two out of three of those things explicitly
pavlov 10y ago
Water and energy are discussed briefly: 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. Travel difficulties aside, endless piles of hydrocarbons lying around ready to be used by people who don't need to wear pressure suits sounds like a good reason to go to Titan instead of Mars... But I get the feeling that the authors are way too optimistic about humans surviving on Titan with "warm clothing and respirators".
- KnightEternal 10y ago
  Regarding the "warm clothing" that'll withstand -180C: that's one hell of a scarf they've got there
- gus_massa 10y ago
  Actually the sentence you copied is so wrong from the chemical/energetic point of view that it paints the rest of the article very unrealialable. Read the comment by stcredzero: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051651
- philip142au 10y ago
  The amount of industrial equipment you would need to get there to extract ice, warm it to water, split and then burn oxygen with hydrocarbons and get enough useful energy, even if you can get enough useful energy, it would be more like a small factory. You may as well have a nuclear reactor on Mars.

kqr2 10y ago

Here are some good arguments for colonizing Mercury: http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html

Tepix 10y ago
Interesting. The strong radiation and long travel time make this even more problematic than a 3-6 month trip away from the Sun to Mars, however.

cstross 10y ago

They almost had me until ... 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. Riiiight. And you're going to get the power to electrolytically split that water into hydrogen and oxygen where, exactly? (Whoever wrote that piece forgot that water is one of the end products of combusting hydrocarbons with oxygen, not a starting point. Basic physical chemistry and thermodynamics.) Let's go through the energy budget of a Titan colony point by point: * 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're used to (per my skimming of this source: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/nov_2007_meeting/presentations/solar_power.pdf http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/nov_2007_meeting/presentations/... ), and that's before we factor in the murkily opaque atmosphere; I infer that photovoltaics are a non-starter on Titan. * Some analog of wind or tidal power might be workable, but remember we'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). * Forget hydrocarbon combustion (coal -- snort!) because there's a slight lack of anything to combust it with. * 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. * Let'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're going to need a lot 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.) It'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). Disclaimer: I am not a planetary scientist, I'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.

mirekrusin 10y ago

Does the colony really need to be on the planet? Why not start on the orbit? We already do it to some extent, can't we try to grow it? Is the spinning disk ok for artificial gravity or the diameter would have to be extremely large? Another alternative could be floating, suspended or at the bottom of the ocean colony. It's like doing test driven development.

ekianjo 10y ago
radiation exposure becomes an issue on the longer term in space.
- w-ll 10y ago
  If we were to invest in building a underwater 'Sealab' on the bottom of some ocean floor, say at least 100m water deep, what kind of cataclysmic event could destroy it. A few dozen of the underwater sea-colonies seams the most practical safety net for humanity that we can do today. I completely for exploring and colonizing space, but we still haven't mapped our own oceans fully. And sadly, I don't think my generation, or even the next few will be any closer to being able to get ourselves off this rock. If you are looking to build 'Arks' for humanity, i'd put my money on the ocean floor.
  - sliken 10y ago
    If there's a nuke war, anything nuke resistant would likely be directly targeted. After all last thing your enemy wants is for the earth to be repopulated by their enemy.
    - vbezhenar 10y ago
      Is it hard to nuke Mars or Titan? Looks the same for me. Deploy nukes in the Mars orbit and destroy colony if needed.
  - mrfusion 10y ago
    We sort of already have this. Nuclear submarines. I wonder if they've ever planned for repopulating the earth? They should carry frozen embryos on board.

agentgt 10y ago

I am probably completely wrong but it seem easier and perhaps more fruitful to build the proper shielding in a station/ship and build a network up in one of the asteroid belts.

neolefty 10y ago
I love this chart: Delta-V required for various solar system destinations: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/534ylb/elon_musk_on_twitter_turns_out_mct_can_go_well/d7q35pp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/534ylb/elon_musk_on...

hereonbusiness 10y ago

We expect human nature to stay the same. Human beings of the future will have the same drives and needs we have now. Practically speaking, their home must have abundant energy, livable temperatures and protection from the rigors of space, including cosmic radiation, which new research suggests is unavoidably dangerous for biological beings like us I would expect the complete opposite if we really want to colonize the solar system at some point. It seems far easier to modify/replace the human body than to try to suit all it's biological needs.

ekianjo 10y ago
probably faster and cheaper to create human like machines In the near term that have none of the problems we have living in harsher environments.
- gulpahum 10y ago
  Exactly! That's why I think we should keep building better AI. It'll be AI, which will be traveling out to the stars, not humans. We could send a probe to a star and once it reaches it, we could simply beam the AI using a transmitter to the probe. Once AI has done its work there, it can be beamed back to Earth (it there is need for that). Build a network of probes and AI can travel between stars at light speed!
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    Creation of AI is not without its own risks to humanity.
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      Not sure what you mean. If we create sentient AI, why dont you consider them to be as human as their creators? It's a matter of philosophy in the end.
WalterBright 10y ago
Yes, modifying humans to adapt better to different gravities, air pressures, ambient light levels and color, temperature, day length, etc., could make colonization much more practical. Realistically, going to other planets/moons will be one way trips anyway, might as well make the most of it.

cesis 10y ago

Weird article. Why excavation on Mars would be a problem?

mikebelanger 10y ago
Presumably it would be energy intensive, especially at Mars' temperatures.

sgentle 10y ago

So, the argument is let's not go to Mars because we'd have to deal with cosmic rays. Instead, let's go to Titan, which has an atmosphere, but is ridiculously cold and rains methane. Also, we can't go there because it's nearly thirty times the distance. Plus we'd still have to deal with cosmic rays along the way. I'm not convinced.

eganist 10y ago
Yup. Frankly, if you can solve the cosmic ray problem for the journey to Titan, you also just solved it for colonizing Mars. Martian gravity is also closer to Earth's, so Mars still seems like the better fit in the immediate term.
- IndianAstronaut 10y ago
  A penny sized hole in a space suit on Mars could mean a quick death. The lack of an atmosphere on Mars would make it exceedingly difficult to set up a colony there.
  - Eerie 10y ago
    >A penny sized hole in a space suit on Mars could mean a quick death. Also true for Titan (surface temperature -179 degrees Celsius).
    - jonahrd 10y ago
      thermodynamics isn't instant like that, and you'd be dressing in layers. It's much different than a hole in a pressurized suit
  - rocky1138 10y ago
    Mars has an atmosphere, it's just not breathable by any life form from Earth.
- sliken 10y ago
  Mars has way more sunlight (much closer to the sun and a much thinner atmosphere), which makes solar much easier. So equipment, supplies, and solar could be on the surface, and the radiation sensitive humans could be a few meters underground. As you mine for water you could dump the useless stuff on the surface and use the emptied space for living quarters. Question is why live somewhere that's tougher than the top of MT Everest or either pole? Guess a population big enough to repopulate earth in case of an extinction level event would be a reasonable safeguard.

sytelus 10y ago

If we ever get to fusion or other unlimited energy source, it may be possible someday to thoroughly transform Titan, relocate 100,000 people on it and flung it in to space to another star. Titan can be our "generational spaceship" that goes forever to infinity and beyond. To colonize galaxy, using moons as spaceship would be necessary assuming there is no way to travel faster than speed of light. So all inter-galactic spaceships needs to be generational, completely self-sufficient in every possible way and have enough population that can evolve without too much of inbreeding for thousands of years.

jp555 10y ago
That's making a lot of assumptions though. For one thing, I think to become an interstellar species, we'll have to direct the evolution of Homo sapiens into some kind of Homo exteriores spatium sapiens. Radiation-hardened, very very long lived, happy to live together in very tight spaces, etc. Might look closer to giant cockroaches than hairless apes. It certainly seems we're a lot closer to the ability to do this (eg. CRISPR-Cas9) than colonize & move a moon.

oska 10y ago

> On Earth, we are shielded from GCRs by water in the atmosphere. But it takes two meters of water to block half of the GCRs present in unprotected space. Build a double-skinned geodesic dome with a 4 metre gap between the two shells. Fill the space between with water. Your 'sky' now has a water-shielding layer.

ajuc 10y ago
1 square meter of such roof would weight 4 tonnes (on Earth). 500 kg on Titan. That's quite a roof.
- patall 10y ago
  yeah, but it scales cubical. If you build your station 8 times as big and only need 2 times the material. So million people colonies become cheaper per person wise. Plus you might be able to grow algea in there.
- neolefty 10y ago
  Also, it will be frozen solid; in a dome shape it could support itself. Construction: Start with a solid dome, layer water/fiber composite on from the outside, then remove the solid dome from the inside?
  - ajuc 10y ago
    So, Mars colonists will be living in iglos :)
sliken 10y ago
Seems hard to build, energy intensive, labor intensive, and materials intensive. Just land, start mining, and use the space left behind. Not to mention a few meter of earth is going to handle damage way better than a geodesic dome.
- natural219 10y ago
  well, a few meter of "titan"

deleted 10y ago

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bitL 10y ago

Alright, so currently we can't even predict how bad osteoporosis becomes after a flight to Mars (will astronauts break their hips on the first step out of landing module?), what would radiation exposure outside Earth's magnetosphere do to our bodies, yet we should hurry up to Titan. Currently even human space flight to Mars is a pipe dream, our practical knowledge constructing vehicles capable of reaching Moon and sustaining human life deteriorated (still using Soviet engines from the 60s?), not mentioning reaching Mars which is way way farther than Moon (50M-400M km vs 380k km, 130-1050x farther). Overcoming this would require massive undertaking of all humanity, like with LHC, and not just PR from SpaceX to secure their funding.

77pt77 10y ago
> Overcoming this would require massive undertaking of all humanity, like with LHC I don't think this is a fair comparison. The LHC while an amazing feat was not complex, in the sense that it was a well defined and very bounded project. Interplanetary travel is such an open project that just defining the relevant problems is in itself much harder than the LHC, let alone solving them.
amelius 10y ago
> Alright, so currently we can't even predict how bad osteoporosis becomes after a flight to Mars On a trip to Mars, I think gravity is not the problem. We can perfectly generate gravity by e.g. sending two modules instead of one, linking them by rods or cables, and then rotating them on the central axis, while sending them forward. Changing gravity on Titan, of course, is a different problem, although at least Titan is lighter than Earth.
sfifs 10y ago
Actually I think the big issue is expense and willingness to fund the expense. There are reasonably straightforward engineering solutions to most of the problems that have been tested for a while (gravity from teethered capsules was tested in the 60s as I recall; Radiation shielding is straightforward with sufficient quantities of water, power through naval submarine type nuclear reactors etc). The problem is these would require massive amounts of mass to be lifted out of our gravity well through rocketry & willingness to fund with potentially insignificant returns doesn't really exist, though I believe some significant fraction of the American military budget should be sufficient. Don't forget that as early as 50 years ago - an era almost primitive by standards of technology available today - given enough money, a number of men visited the moon.

zyngaro 10y ago

Or let's spend all this money and energy keep earth a safe and livable place to be.

macintux 10y ago
Did you actually read the article to its conclusion?
- zyngaro 10y ago
  Yes I did.

wowoc 10y ago

The article says that the water ice could be used as a source of oxygen, needed to power the combustion of hydrocarbons as fuel. But the oxygen is trapped in water molecules, wouldn't it need to be freed from the hydrogen atoms first (which requires energy)?

FreeFull 10y ago
I have looked it up, and it seems the combustion of methane produces more energy than the combustion of hydrogen. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen won't be 100% efficient though, and neither will be turning heat into useful energy, so I don't know if you'll still be energy-positive in the end.
- sidek 10y ago
  More realistic might be a long-term preparation scenario in which we send a first wave of robots to set up some solar panels and run them to store H2 and O2 for a couple of decades. We won't have gained energy necessarily, but we will have stored it in large enough amounts that early colonisation will have extra energy if it needs it.

lolive 10y ago

It is much easier to send on Titan a bunch of seaweeds, various seeds, etc. And let an ecosystem eventually arise by itself. Of course, we should send some bibles too. So the Titan creatures can learn who/what their mighty creator is. Amen.

graycat 10y ago

Good idea! There are some people I would encourage to go on the first trip!

camillomiller 10y ago

If you really want to read some interesting and literary valuable sci-fi about Titan, then read Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan". :) https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Titan-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0385333498/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480257192&sr=8-1&keywords=sirens+of+titan https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Titan-Novel-Kurt-Vonnegut/dp/0...

avian 10y ago
Another sci-fi novel about a manned mission to Titan is Stephen Baxter's Titan. It's somewhat depressing though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Baxter_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Baxter_novel)
peatmoss 10y ago
Also feels very different compared to other Vonnegut. Definitely more sci-fi feel than social commentary as in his later books. Sirens of Titan aged better past my teen years than did, say, Slaughterhouse Five. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot that I love about later Vonnegut. But Sirens of Titan stands out as an early gem.

solarengineer 10y ago

This reminds me of Wanderers by Erik Wernquist [0]. [0] https://vimeo.com/108650530 https://vimeo.com/108650530 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6GY_PfjCQI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6GY_PfjCQI Edit: at 2:34, see how Erik imagines people might fly in Methane environments.

nickparker 10y ago

This is exceedingly silly. Saturn's magnetosphere concentrates radiation primarily on Enceladus, Dione, and surprise surprise: Titan. The atmosphere doesn't mean much when you're under the cosmic equivalent of a magnifying glass.

koheripbal 10y ago
If a surface temperature of −179.5 °C isn't enough to stop someone, logic never will.
- yummybear 10y ago
  “There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.” So remember your mittens, people.
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    How do you protect your eyes? Serious question.
    - falcolas 10y ago
      Goggles work remarkably well down to -100, so pushing that form of technology further doesn't seem too impossible, especially if you add active heating. Look at how they protect people from the weather in Antarctica, and you'll see the prototypes which could be expanded upon to survive even colder weather.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - patall 10y ago
      You would always wear a full body suit. There are only two places in the solar system where the human body can survive for short time without any gear: Earth, ... and the upper parts of Venus atmosphere (lacking oxygen though)
10y ago

andrewfromx 10y ago

"Housing could be made of plastic produced from the unlimited resources harvested on the surface" drill baby drill? Plastic? Like petroleum based plastic? So we humans should move from planet to planet like locusts?

baron816 10y ago

I would still rather live on Earth after the worst case scenario for climate change or a nuclear war.

corndoge 10y ago
Wouldn't the worst case for climate change or nuclear war entail humanity's extinction?
- kgabis 10y ago
  It would mean the end of current civilization, but I don't think getting rid of humans is that easy.

sneezeplease 10y ago

Articles like this are just pure mental masturbating over a model that isnt even possible. The earth is flat and the Universe isnt billions of light years across.

banach 10y ago

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 ecosystem and cut energy use to manageable levels. If we re-distribute our wealth, population growth will subside. If we put pressure on our rulers, they will work to eliminate the nuclear stockpiles. There are simple solutions to most of our issues. Once we have solved them, maybe we can start thinking about spreading our species to other places.

jgrowl 10y ago
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. None of those are simple changes.
- banach 10y ago
  I am not being sarcastic. Compared to terraforming, or even colonizing a planet to the point where it becomes a serious alternative to Earth, they are utterly trivial.
  - ivan_gammel 10y ago
    People are not going to abandon the Earth, so we have to protect it in all ways possible. But it's still not a reason for abandoning our advancement to space. We do have resources to move in both directions.
  - eganist 10y ago
    You're talking about philosophical and behavioral changes on a global and generational scale. Compared to those, scientific advancements in terraforming are positively trivial.
    - devoply 10y ago

aaron695 10y ago

Lets not fork the future of space travel please.

Koshkin 10y ago

In all likelihood, we will (continue to) be "colonizing" the virtual Universe, not the physical one. Look at all the advancements being made in VR, robotics, AI, and computer hardware. And considering that even putting a man on the Moon was - and still is - enormously difficult, I have a hard time imagining any progress being made here on any significant scale in the foreseeable future. I think it may be time to realize that an extrapolation into the future of the exponential progress that has been taking place in physics and other sciences may be not justified.

Chathamization 10y ago
Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised if we get brain uploads before we get a self-sustaining Mars Colony. At which point current efforts to colonize Mars would have the same impact on spreading humans throughout the universe as the Tower of Babel did in getting us to the moon.

tarr11 10y ago

Evolution is the obvious answer for how we move into hostile environments. Hardening the environment seems inefficient. Seveneves is a fun book that explores this concept. E.g., probably better to evolve a few new species who can live in orbit around the earth for a few thousand years. They'd have a better time with all these issues (radiation, resources, etc)

veli_joza 10y ago
Some scientists (Hawking, etc...) consider evolution to apply beyond biological context. In that sense, any usage of technology to solve this problem could also be considered evolution. As example, in Accelerando by Charles Stross, human consciousness is transfered into virtual reality environment and sent several light years away in a can-sized probe.

IndianAstronaut 10y ago

What is really needed first is rovers on Titan that can explore the lakes, ice deposits and possible geothermal energy there. We already know Enceladus, another of Saturn's moons, has abundant water and heating from Saturn's tidal pull.

jyriand 10y ago

Half joking, but how come we always gravitate toward exploring exterior space, but not our interior universe in the brain? "God" knows what we could find, once the brave psychonauts have returned from their mind trips. We might as well abandon traveling on mechanical starships and become star rovers ourselves, uploading our consciousness into fabric of space-time and exploring mythical worlds and archetypes that are inhabiting our minds still undiscovered.

cmurf 10y ago

The takeaway: "There is no quick way to move off the Earth. We will have to solve our problems here."

edem 10y ago

What about the effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity? Not to talk about the psychological effects of isolation and low light.

transfire 10y ago

This is silly. First we should build orbiting colonies, some that can fairy between the moon, mars and eventually other planets (I believe these are often called Cyclers). Solving the living condition issues in these colonies is actually easy -- they would be large rotating cylinders to provide artificial gravity (probably 1/2 g) and the outer perimeters would be water containment which is very good at blocking cosmic rays. A strong magnetic core could also provide some shielding.

Nomentatus 10y ago

But you can't export materials from it, thanks to that atmosphere: https://medium.com/@russellirvinjohnston/why-the-start-inhabiting-the-moon-and-not-mars-its-the-economy-stupid-2bd01c211fc0 https://medium.com/@russellirvinjohnston/why-the-start-inhab...

bigtunacan 10y ago

We struggle to get people to move to Iowa because of the cold winters. The record low of all time is -47F, but the average low for January (our coldest month) is around 11F. I don't see people signing up like crazy to move to Titan where they are trapped in doors all year round. I don't mean this as a joke either; considering mental issues like SADD and just general anxiety that many people suffer when trapped indoors, even in large spaces, for too long I think that solving the technical issues with moving to Titan will not be the hardest challenge to overcome.

GFischer 10y ago
People don't move to Iowa because it's Iowa. Compare to the northern European countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland), which have to hold back immigration, and have much harsher climate (Des Moines is much warmer than Oslo, for example). If economic conditions in Titan were similar to Norway, you wouldn't have a shortfall of migrants. Maybe U.S. citizens don't want to go there, but there's a significant percentage of the world population that will go anywhere where they can make money. https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Oslo,Norway https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Tem... https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature-Sunshine,Des-Moines,United-States-of-America https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Tem...
- bigtunacan 10y ago
  You open with, "People don't move to Iowa because it's Iowa.", but then you say, "If economic conditions in Titan were similar to Norway, you wouldn't have a shortfall of migrants." As far as the US economy goes, Iowa is a great place to live. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation coupled with an extremely low cost of living relative to most areas in the US. Despite these great economic conditions we don't have a huge influx of people migrating to Iowa. As far as Norway goes; Norway has a fairly unique economic situation to the rest of the world due to their welfare system that is enabled by the profits coming from the vast amount of natural resources they are able to export. Considering the huge cost and resources that would be associated with colonizing a planet I don't see how they would have an economy that bears in resemblance to that of Norway for any foreseeable amount of time after colonization.

woogiewonka 10y ago

"It’s cold on Titan, at -180°C (-291°F), but thanks to its thick atmosphere, residents wouldn’t need pressure suits—just warm clothing and respirators." Sure, JUST warm clothing. I'd like to see the author step outside in -291F! How can this possibility be sustainable?

rbanffy 10y ago
Also keep in mind those "warm" clothes would keep residents at what locally would be rock-melting temperatures. It'd be like keeping hot lava lifeforms happy above Earth's surface.

Animats 10y ago

Face it, the off-earth real estate in this solar system really sucks.

jack9 10y ago

Who cares about a magenetosphere? Dig underground with water tanks lining the top and problem solved 100%. If you can't do that on Mars, you aren't going to survive Titan anyway. SMH scientific american.

Zigurd 10y ago

With the possible exception of underground colonies on Mars, it seems likelier, sooner, that humans will re-engineer themselves for long-duration space travel and life on other planets than we will engineer those planets to be livable for Earth-dwelling humans.

StreamBright 10y ago

There are lots of technical problems to be solved associated with space travel and colonising a new planet. SpaceX is trying to solve some of these but there are a lot of other problems not well know. Once we solved these we can move on to the more popular subjects like near light speed space travel. The problems to be solved: - how to reduce exposure to radiation (cosmic rays, GCRs) while traveling with a space ship - how to reduce exposure to radiation coming from space while living on a planet like Mars not having a magnetosphere "The health threat from cosmic rays is the danger posed by galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles to astronauts on interplanetary missions or any missions that venture through the Van-Allen Belts or outside the Earth's magnetosphere.[1][2] Galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) consist of high energy protons (85%), helium (14%) and other high energy nuclei (HZE ions).[1] Solar energetic particles consist primarily of protons accelerated by the Sun to high energies via proximity to solar flares and coronal mass ejections. They are one of the most important barriers standing in the way of plans for interplanetary travel by crewed spacecraft." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays

johngalt 10y ago

What's the net energy on combusting hydrocarbon fuel when all your oxygen comes from breaking the oxygen bonded with H20? I'm betting it's not great.

Roboprog 10y ago
Negative. But storing liquid H2 is hard, vs (CH2)n. Carrying around O2 and Propane is easier than putting a nuke on wheels.

natch 10y ago

"Humans" is a huge and ultimately quaint assumption in some of these discussions. Any such expansion to other planets will be happening in the same time frame that we get robots or embodied artificial intelligence, whatever you want to call it, with capabilities on par with and then beyond humans. In the context of interplanetary expansion, there are not a lot of reasons that these future organisms need to be restricted to living only in human-friendly environments. I'm all for efforts to expand human life to other viable places, but also it's time to enlarge the discussion.

tehchromic 10y ago

I find the "colonize other planets" dream of the secular/scientific community to be most like the "you'll go to heaven when you die" idea in religious paradoxy. You would think we might have experimented with teraforming uninhabitable place here on earth - the bottom of the Mariana, or Death Valley. If that was a snap, then we might contemplate Moon or Mars or Titan. But in fact we are systematically rendering our own planet uninhabitable. Our planet is the product of billions of years of biological teraformation that has created the narrow and extremely specialized spectrum of environmental factors in which we live comfortably. It is far easier to eat that up than it is to replicate it. The answer is to drop our extreme hubris and misguided religious style escapism and instead develop some respect for planet e, and proceed with extreme caution moving forward, or we will find our own planet unfit for living on. Not saying interplanetary travel isn't possible, however I strongly disagree with the statement in the article that 'humanity will remain the same' and adapt our environment to suit us. If we make it to other planets we will be so altered we will not recognize ourselves. IMO that's a long loooong way off and requires that we don't extinct ourselves in the meantime.

overgard 10y ago
This is such a weird argument. You're basically saying "our political wisdom has not caught up to our technological prowess, so we should avoid undertaking this great technological challenge." It just doesn't follow. If the 20th century taught us anything it's that technology doesn't wait for politics to catch up. If anything technology tends to drive political change (for better and worse), and so the notion that great projects should wait for some political utopia before proceeding is disconnected from reality.
- tehchromic 10y ago
  I actually agree with you. I think that chasing dreams and visions, ie "the afterlife" is a better motivator than scolding and regulating ourselves. Even so, I think at the level of intellect and organizational administration, it's important to have the line between reality and fiction extremely clear, so I don't mind saying so.
10y ago

rm445 10y ago

There's something that never seems to be mentioned in articles on making decisions for planet colonisation based on cosmic radiation: humanity is already trying like crazy to defeat cancer, for the obvious reason that it kills people here on Earth as well. It might sound utopian to suggest that one day we'll just take our anti-cancer pills and not worry about it, but when we're talking colonisation potentially a couple of hundred years ahead, it shouldn't be discounted. (The point in this article about damage to brain tissue is interesting, but again, that's not something that medical research here on Earth will be neglecting).

mnw21cam 10y ago
Problem is that cancer is not just one disease - it is about two hundred different types. I'm not sure I want to take two hundred different anti-cancer pills every day.

samstave 10y ago

Serious question(s): (TL;DR a robot version of Matt Damon in The Martian?) Are there any efforts for fully automated robotic enviroment creation (I dont know the term, not terraforming) -- but sending a robot that will build a structure, then another which will fill it with soil, then atmosphere, then harvest, test, distill whatever ice we can to create water and then grow plants? Obviously this is a lot of effort and would take a global team to put such a sequence together and likely take 100 years, but is anyone (aside from figuring out the pre-req's to actually get to mars) trying to do this? What is different between Mars and the Moon with respect to testing such robots on the moon first? Why are we focused on Mars and Titan when we have an extra-terrestrial body that is so much closer to us? Why has Elon Musk focused on Mars as opposed to the Moon first? Talk about A/B testing, we have much more rapid development of capabilities on the Moon, do we not?

dimitar 10y ago

I appreciate that the article points out at the end: "There is no quick way to move off the Earth. We will have to solve our problems here." Solving the climate change and other ecological issues we face here is surely easier than colonizing other planetary bodies.

ImTalking 10y ago
The problems we have on this planet are not technological issues but social issues. And social issues are much harder to solve.

stcredzero 10y ago

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 dense than storing hydrogen. The weak gravity—similar to the Moon’s—combined with the thick atmosphere would allow individuals to aviate with wings on their backs. If the wings fall off, no worry, landing will be easy. Terminal velocity on Titan is a tenth that found on the Earth. A 12 mph collision with solid rock or packed dirt is survivable, given the proper technique or circumstances. It's also still potentially fatal.

jjtheblunt 10y ago
wouldn't the same weak gravity imply less dense atmosphere to support wings, evening out?
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Not necessarily. Titan's atmosphere is actually denser than Earth's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan
  - s_q_b 10y ago
    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 on Earth.
    - wallace_f 10y ago
      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.

throwaway98237 10y ago

The point of going to Mars is to give humanity a plan b, not as a vacation with lots of hiking and other outdoor leisure stuff. Considering how much time an Earthling spends indoors, it's not a huge leap to spend all of one's time indoors. Building underground and staying inside. There, problem solved. Makes a whole lot more sense than making our first attempt at colonizing a whole new would at the distances we'd be looking at with Titan.

throwbsidbdk 10y ago

This is rediculous. I would take a vacuum any day over an atmosphere that's -300°!!! And it's thicker than earth so the thermal problem will be even worse. It's probably harder to insulate these crazy temps than protect from a vacuum.

rocky1138 10y ago

I love the idea of colonizing other worlds, but it hardly seems realistic to make such grandiose plans for a place we've never landed rovers or other equipment successfully.

eponeponepon 10y ago
We have landed successfully on Titan - we even took a photo or two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)#/media/File:Huygens_surface_color_sr.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)#/media/Fi...
- rocky1138 10y ago
  Oh! Interesting. I stand corrected.

rocky1138 10y ago

I love the idea of colonizing other worlds, but it hardly seems realistic to make such grandiose plans for a place we've never landed rovers or other equipment successfully.

owly 10y ago

How about colonizing Earth with like minded people who are dedicated to saving it?

arikrak 10y ago
What will you do with everyone else? Sounds like they may cause problems. I think to save Earth we'll need to eliminate those who aren't like minded... "Quick unplug the AI, it's gone bad!"
- owly 10y ago
  AI may be a better option to save us at this point.

brownbat 10y ago

I would like to read a serious scientific case for the pros/cons of colonizing the sea floor so I can have it on standby, as a comparative baseline for these sorts of pieces.

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ImTalking 10y ago

I think the present research into the colonisation of other planets is too slow to ultimately help mankind. Our resource and climate problems on this planet will cause serious issues within the next 100 years. Personally, I think we should pour all our research into the quantum world. Finally understanding the quantum world will have a tremendous impact on mankind; the quantum computers would have unimaginable power and capabilities; we may be able to harness the quantum world for unlimited clean energy with progress already being done; we could understand the wave and particle duality so that we could 'convert' ourselves to wavefunctions and travel at the speed of light rather than the paltry speeds of today; and ultimately we could eliminate our physical forms and immerse ourselves in the quantum world as wavefunctions (a la Lucy) which would then remove any physical requirements such as location, resources, etc. I think this is more plausible and near-term than physically uprooting ourselves to another planet using incremental scientific advancements. The survival of our species may require, as Neil Armstrong said, a giant leap.

adrianN 10y ago
Space colonization never was about changing things on Earth. We will ~never be able to send a meaningful number of people to other planets, so no environmental problems on Earth will be solved, except perhaps by proxy via improved technology. Quantum computers are also way less cool than popsci makes them look. Unless you want to do quantum mechanical simulations or factor prime numbers, normal computers are fine.

jiltedfrog 10y ago

"Imperial Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke, deals with human colonization of Titan.

kriptonic 10y ago

Does anyone know more about the recent research into galactic cosmic rays? I believe the article has it completely wrong, but I'm not sure.