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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

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.
hyperbovine 10y ago
Did we read the same article? It literally rains methane on Titan. Combustion would be tricky due to lack of an oxidizer, but presumably we could use something like the fuel cell technology that's already deployed here on earth to generate electricity from CH4. Energy, at least, would not be a problem.
- philip142au 10y ago
  Clearly without oxygen you can't burn those hydrocarbons. Where do you get the oxygen from? Its like having a planet full of fuel and nothing to burn with. Fuel cell technology needs oxygen.

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.

hyperbovine 10y ago

Did we read the same article? It literally rains methane on Titan. Combustion would be tricky due to lack of an oxidizer, but presumably we could use something like the fuel cell technology that's already deployed here on earth to generate electricity from CH4. Energy, at least, would not be a problem.

philip142au 10y ago
Clearly without oxygen you can't burn those hydrocarbons. Where do you get the oxygen from? Its like having a planet full of fuel and nothing to burn with. Fuel cell technology needs oxygen.