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

• fnord77 7y ago
  terraform venus. it's much closer, has a nice .9g and maybe a viable long-term project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus
  • austincheney 7y ago
    It is theorized that Venus once had an Earth like atmosphere. Venus has virtually no magnetic field unlike Earth. Without the protection of something like the Van Allen radiation belt the Sun would have easily blown off any thin high density atmosphere and eventually cook off any surface level hydrocarbons into a thick hazy atmosphere with a super greenhouse effect. Any terraforming effort would have to take that into account and capture atmospheric sulfur.
    • AdmiralGinge 7y ago
      I suppose any attempt at terraforming has to create oceans if we want an Earth-like habitat (theoretically this could be achieved by re-directing enough comets at Venus or Mars provided we can utilise that kind of energy in the future). Could perhaps a form of sulphur-fixing bacteria be developed to colonise these oceans and remove it from the atmosphere as sediment? As for the magnetic field, if the lack of convection in the core is a problem (perhaps due to the core completely solidifying) couldn't we just dump enough heat energy into it to restart the dynamo action? In the future it's not completely unrealistic to think antimatter production and storage will improve, that's certainly a way of releasing absurd amounts of energy.
  • jacobush 7y ago
    Impractical, but Venus Cloud Cities would work maybe. 1 Earth atmosphere at 20 degrees Celcius if I recall correctly.
  • imjasonmiller 7y ago
    The much weaker gravity and its effects on human health is something I rarely see mentioned. If one were to be born on a body with a much weaker gravity than Earth, e.g. Mars (0.38) or the Moon (0.17), wouldn’t this confine them to bodies where gravity is less than or approximately equal?
    • ufmace 7y ago
      The best answer right now is that nobody has any idea what, if any, effect that would have on human health. It hasn't been tried yet, so we just don't know.
• Santosh83 7y ago
  Let's first ensure we do all possible things as a species and a collection of communities to restabilise Earth and give ourselves a 99.5% chance of healthful survival for the next 200 years, which is probably the reasonable timeline until we can establish more or less independent non-Earth habitats that can survive without Earth indefinitely. This is like expressing the wish of wanting to run while simultaneously ignoring the fact that your hands are uncontrollably stabbing your legs with safety pins.
  • austincheney 7y ago
    Why not do both?
    • defterGoose 7y ago
      Because limited resources are a thing that exists? I think if you were to take a poll, most people would agree that throwing all our economic might behind preserving the one bastion of life we know of in the universe is a better course of action than spending our time and money on what for the foreseeable future remains a pipe dream to be smoked by the very few. In all likelihood, we will need the technologies developed in a green revolution to even have a fighting chance of success at colonizing other worlds.
      • austincheney 7y ago
        I wouldn’t leave that decision in the hands of an internet poll.
        • defterGoose 7y ago
          You have trillions to spend? I say go for it.
    • simonh 7y ago
      If there is one thing I’ve learned, from many posters on HN in many different topic, it’s that human civilisation is apparently incapable of achieving more than one goal at a time.
• cookingrobot 7y ago
  Let’s colonize Mercury. It’s not actually hot at the poles - it’s shaded enough from the consistent low angle to the sun that there’s even water ice. And the planet is full of useful metals (more than earth), and as much solar energy as you can handle. The article dismisses Mercury out of hand as “too hot” but I think it’s our best bet. https://www.universetoday.com/130109/how-do-we-colonize-mercury/ https://www.universetoday.com/130109/how-do-we-colonize-merc...
  • RangerScience 7y ago
    I think it was in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" universe that they colonize Mercury by making an equatorial train, that's pushed along by the thermal expansion of the tracks. Always struck me as nifty, if kinda silly, when you could do the polar thing like you're suggesting.
    • BLKNSLVR 7y ago
      That was in the novel 2312. Highly recommended for the scope of ideas, however far fetched they're presented well. I'm currently struggling 200 pages into Blue Mars. Great series though (I'm struggling with it due to life getting in the way, as opposed to it becoming a grind - although there's a bit of that too, but it's three 700-odd page novels...)
      • p_l 7y ago
        There was a visit to Mercury colony close to Blue Mars epilogue (this is not much of a spoiler).
  • jacobush 7y ago
    It's devoid of volatiles though? And in a deep gravity well. I may be very expensive to leave. So it would feel a little lonely, and psychologically I think it would be scary to be so close to the Sun.
    • Tuna-Fish 7y ago
• RangerScience 7y ago
  Sincere question: Anyone know what would be involved in igniting Jupiter, and what kind of heating that would provide to it's moons?
  • csunbird 7y ago
    Throw in more mass, than it will ignite itself and be the second sun. Actually, when you think about it, Jupiter is a good candidate for a dyson sphere.
    • robotresearcher 7y ago
      Jupiter is around 1/79 the mass of a red dwarf. So it’s only 1/79 better than empty space as a place to build your new star.
  • austincheney 7y ago
    Combustion requires wholesale access to oxygen.
  • lend000 7y ago
    I thought this was interesting so did a quick search: it does not look feasible [0]. Note: even if it were possible, the small relative increase in radiation received by Earth may have a butterfly effect similar to greenhouse gases and make global warming even more difficult to manage than it already is. [0] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/776/can-jupiter-be-ignited https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/776/can-jupiter-...
  • Tepix 7y ago
    By igniting I assume you mean nuclear fusion. Jupiter does not have enough mass. So what would it take? Transfering mass from the sun to Jupiter I guess. Not sure how much heating it would provide to its moons. It already provides an unhealthy amount of radiation.
  • bhaak 7y ago
    Jupiter is not even a brown dwarf which starts at about 13 times the mass of Jupiter. For upgrading Jupiter to a star, it would need 80 times its current mass. There is nowhere else in the solar system enough mass to grow Jupiter but the Sun. Taking that mass from the Sun is in theory feasible but of course out of the range of our capabilities for quite some time. That's for natural nuclear fission though which would waste a lot of energy going into space and not where we would want to have it (the moons). It's probably more realistic to build small fission suns that orbit the moons that produce heat and light in a less wasteful, more directed manner. Still not possible today :-)
• needs 7y ago
  It looks a better bet to colonize Mars with genetically modified humans to sustain radiation. If such technology is not available at the time, having DNA correcting machines to give birth to sane humans is probably going to be a solved problem by then. Even though adults will suffers from the radiations.
• blackrock 7y ago
  I think it’s a better idea to just build a rotating space habitat. Harvest the metals from the moon, and build a mass driver to launch it into Earth orbit, where it’ll get assembled into the space habitat. Then spin it to get 1g.
• Tepix 7y ago
  The article argues that on Mars we'd have to live underground which requires a lot of construction of tunnels and excavation. It does not appear to take into consideration the huge lava tubes that are present on Mars (and even bigger on the Moon). These are estimated to be dozens of kilometers long and hundreds of meters wide. They could be very attractive for human colonies. On the other hand on Triton, even if you live at the surface, the Sun will be very weak. The main advantage of not living underground will be less resources to create a habitat. I consider sufficient natural sunlight to be important for human wellbeing.
  • DarthGhandi 7y ago
    Shielding Mars is possible with current technology. https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmo...
    • dylan604 7y ago
      Is it though? The link only discusses the theory of placing a large magnet in the Mars-Sun L1 point. It does not discuss the makings of that magnet. What's going to power it? Solar? Nuclear? So at the end of the day, I'm still left not knowing if we have the tech to be able to do this. This seems like a no-brainer of something should/needs/must be done to make humans living on Mars anything more than just a though exerciser.
      • DarthGhandi 7y ago
        At it's simplest is a ring with power flowing through it, the power requirements would be minimal, 1 Tesla needed and a deflection of a fraction of a degree. I've seen estimates in the single digit MW range which we build solar plants on Earth for a few million each. Power generation is somewhat irrelevant, getting the material up there and maintaining it will be the real monetary challenge. Read the link at the end of the popsci article. There's a huge amount of research going into generating magnetic fields for spaceships and inhabited bases.
• gridlockd 7y ago
  Let's first figure out astro-mining and self-sufficient space stations. Planets or moons are overrated as habitats.
• keiferski 7y ago
  Two thoughts on this topic: 1. The film Gattaca (1997), in addition to being an excellent, inspiring film all around, centers on an aspiring astronaut's upcoming trip to Titan. Highly recommended. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZa83dTf4JA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZa83dTf4JA 2. The colonization of Venus is also a fascinating idea that isn't talked about much in comparison to the Moon or Mars. Essentially, the surface is too hot for colonization, but it may be possible to build floating cities ±31 miles above the surface. - Venus's atmosphere is made mostly out of carbon dioxide. Because nitrogen and oxygen are lighter than carbon-dioxide, breathable-air-filled balloons will float at a height of about 50 km (31 mi). At this height, the temperature is a manageable 75 °C (348 K; 167 °F); or 27 °C (300 K; 81 °F) if we could get 5 km (3.1 mi) higher - The atmosphere also provides the various elements required for human life and agriculture: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. - Additionally, the upper atmosphere could provide protection from harmful solar radiation comparable to the protection provided by Earth's atmosphere. The Atmosphere of Mars, as well as the Moon provide little such protection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus
  • sulam 7y ago
    "Strap in folks, we're going through some turbulence... For the rest of your lives."
    • giantrobot 7y ago
      Like a life-long Maxell commercial but with acid rain.
  • garmaine 7y ago
    > The colonization of Venus is also a fascinating idea that isn't talked about much in comparison to the Moon or Mars. Essentially, the surface is too hot for colonization... Nah, you're just not thinking big enough: https://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/TerraformingVenusQuickly.pdf https://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/TerraformingVenusQuickly....
    • 7y ago
• blueboo 7y ago
  Let's. But first, let's colonize the ocean. And the sky. And the moon.
• muzani 7y 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. I'm no space colony expert but am I missing something here? -180°C sounds like constant space suit level, not "just warm clothing".
  • Insanity 7y ago
    And here I am, with my (Mexican) wife mentioning almost daily how horribly cold it is here in Europe. I'm also not sure what kind of warm clothing they'd mean lol.
    • djohnston 7y ago
      goretex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e58SiFSxLs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e58SiFSxLs :p
      • Insanity 7y ago
        oh man I'm looking forward to watch Seinfeld again when it's on Netflix!
  • Juliate 7y ago
    At least, the suit would not need to be pressurized and extremely resistant to punctures. At most, warm & insulated enough.
  • openasocket 7y ago
    Yeah that confused me too. You'd definitely need your suit to be watertight (or rather liquid-methane-tight) so that the liquid doesn't touch your skin to prevent immediate frostbite. Maybe you won't need a fully pressurized suit, but that's just so low I feel like you wouldn't be able to survive for long periods without some sort of active heating (i.e. walking around with a portable furnace).
  • bregma 7y ago
    A generous slathering of bear fat or whale blubber is all it would take. Maybe a vinyl outer suit so the viscious liquid methane rain doesn't dissolve your insulation. On second thought, some kind of heated space suit sounds more comfortable.
• rice_otaku 7y ago
  We gotta do it before the Hive and Fallen colonize it.
• rmason 7y ago
  I thought Elon Musk wanted to terraform the poles of Mars to make it more habitable. He even has promised t-shirts that say Nuke Mars. https://www.space.com/elon-musk-nuke-mars-terraforming.html https://www.space.com/elon-musk-nuke-mars-terraforming.html
• viach 7y ago
  Maybe consider Earth's oceans first? It's somewhat closer, has some food resources, the gravity is also OK.
• WalterBright 7y ago
  Colonize the moon first: 1. plenty of solar power 2. close to earth 3. easy to launch out of its gravity well 4. lunar base technology can be iterated far more rapidly
  • me_me_me 7y ago
    That is actually a cool idea. I have seen idea that you can use giant slingshots to hurl cargo out into orbit for cheap as those would use solar energy to prime. If you think about it we could be doing so many cool things as species, if only we clean up the whole politicking and squabbling over resources and power. Technologically it seems we are on the edge of being able to expand out into solar system.
  • Symmetry 7y ago
    I think colonizing the Moon is a good idea must mostly just the south pole to start with. On most of the Moon you have 2 weeks of frigid darkness you where you're living off batteries followed by 2 weeks of intense sunlight. At the peak of eternal light at the south pole you can just slowly turn your solar array 360 degrees over the course of a month and have (nearly) continuous power. There's a big difference between having to have 12 hours of battery power, as on Mars, and 336 hours on the Moon.
    • tantalor 7y ago
      > slowly turn your solar array Sure that's nice but the angle of sunlight is very low so you are limited in that respect, e.g,. available surface area.
      • mark-r 7y ago
        There's no atmospheric absorption though, so that would compensate a bit. Building very tall structures would be easy in the low gravity, and you wouldn't need to worry about earthquakes or storms.
        • WalterBright 7y ago
• state_less 7y ago
  Let's colonize LEO. You get radiation protection from earth's magnetosphere. You get zero G for funsies. You get a new perspective on earth and interesting new kinds of manufacturing. It's not too far away, so you can get there and back in a day. It's far enough in space that you need to improve your closed cycle systems. You might survive a number of different cataclysms. It seems like a good stepping stone.
  • garmaine 7y ago
    > You get radiation protection from earth's magnetosphere. Only in very specific orbits (NOT the ones we are currently using, btw.) The Earth's magnetosphere actually captures dangerous radiation and various anomalies in the belt distribution cause portions of low-Earth orbits to be irradiated. > You get zero G for funsies. And the medical issues. > interesting new kinds of manufacturing. There are a handful of (very interesting) crystal manufacturing that requires zero-g. These could be done in automated or human tended LEO or LLO manufacturing labs. You don't need a large human presence. To the downsides, LEO lacks any resources whatsoever, and still has a nontrivial delta-v to the rest of the system. All your arguments in favor could be applied to the Moon, which does have LOTS of resources and better radiation shielding.
    • russdill 7y ago
      And really, it's the atmosphere that does the bulk of the radiation protection work. Astronauts abort the ISS still experience their fair share of radiation. As mentioned though, their orbit is far from ideal and different orbits have less radiation.
    • Symmetry 7y ago
      So, the ISS orbit crosses the South American Magnetic Anomaly sometimes which does give them a bit of inner Van Allen belt radiation sometimes. But they're still completely protected from direct emissions of charged particles from Sun. They would get much, much more radiation if they were orbiting out by the Moon even before you start worrying about solar storms.
    • state_less 7y ago
• novalis78 7y ago
  I am pretty sure the Martian congressional republic is not going to stop colonizing just Mars. They’ll have every incentive to push further, faster :-)
• mnm1 7y ago
  What exactly is the problem that colonizing another planet or moon is trying to solve? This seems like a solution without a problem. And if that problem is that the earth becomes uninhabitable, what kind of moron thinks we can colonize a planet or moon when we can't even keep ourselves alive on earth?
  • otabdeveloper4 7y ago
    "We trashed this planet, let's find another one".
  • egdod 7y ago
    A random asteroid impact could end the human species next month. If we spread to other worlds, our chances of survival go way up.
• davedx 7y ago
  Not a single comment calling out this article's complete lack of scientific references, including the "iron smashing our brains at relativistic velocities" quote? I think it's great to consider other planets we can colonize, and indeed a thick atmosphere has a lot of benefits, but it's hardly rational to state Mars has "a deal-breaking problem" without providing any hard evidence to back up this claim.
  • mustntmumble 7y ago
    Scientific American is a magazine for the general public that have a high school level education in science. It is not a peer reviewed scientific journal, thus the SA articles do not have the same level of footnotes and references that a scholarly journal might. Having said that, I think on balance, the quality of journalism in SA is excellent, thanks in part to highly skilled and qualified editors. Anyway, this article by the "discoverer of the Solar Wind" (maybe validator is a better word), Eugene Parker, is relevant to this discussion: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~sshepherd/research/Shielding/docs/Parker_06.pdf https://www.dartmouth.edu/~sshepherd/research/Shielding/docs...
• jerome-jh 7y ago
  Why not colonize deserts on earth? It is vastly less energy consuming, vastly more useful, but no less of a challenge.
  • kingkawn 7y ago
    Because if you’re talking about things we can’t do anyway might as well talk about the ones that we can’t do the most
  • zshrdlu 7y ago
    Many (science fiction) dystopian societies have high inequality, with some people living in orbit while the rest eat Soylent Green. We live in such a dystopia, and many people on HN don't realize it because they are the lucky ones. Colonizing Mars isn't a goal that solves any particular problem in our civilization - it's a red herring.
  • Zenbit_UX 7y ago
    I suspect it's because you're missing the larger point here. Having off-site backups is best practice for both system administrators _and_ civilizations.
• marcusKral 7y ago
  As a doctrine, colonization hasn't worked too well for humanity. It assumes an ethnocentric view where the colonizer has the right to take or use resources that they believe they "discovered". Just because there aren't any humans there, doesn't mean it doesn't already belong to someone. And just because we are able to take over a moon, doesn't mean we have the right to. Instead of colonizing, we should be talking about zero impact exploration where we leave things exactly as they were before we arrived. Then focus on using what we learn to fix and protect our own planet.
  • shadowprofile77 7y ago
    Belong to who? All known solar space and beyond is literally devoid of any life at all. Are you assuming super aliens? Or perhaps a god of some kind, who pre-claims ownership? And if so, how did these beings get their "right" to have it?. What exactly countermands our right to the take over the moon or any other part of local space? Name some concrete thing, not just an arbitrary notion of rights. The obvious from these, to what purpose zero impact exploration of space? Sure, nothing should be destroyed just because... But you do realize that you're not talking about fragile ecosystems here, but vast dead landscapes that are the literal products of cataclysmic destructive processes that are in many places still ongoing? Your comment is so absurdly out of context for the environments we're all discussing here that it's tempting to think you're trolling.
    • marcusKral 7y ago
      And that's exactly the problem... we don't know what we don't know. We are assuming life exists only in the form that we have encountered it on Earth. And we're assuming that just because we can't find something, that it isn't there. We are taking all things solely from our perspective and we are convinced that they can't be any other way. This seems extremely egocentric and could be disastrous when encounter something far outside of our narrow perspective. And what if we find a bacteria on Titan that lives beneath the surface but is harmful to humans, will we exterminate it for our own sake? What level of intelligence is required before we attribute value to another species. As far as rights are concerned, this is a real issue. If the first country to Titan plants a flag and then says, "This moon is ours". Does that make it theirs? Will countries fight wars to protect their perceived rights to a particular moon? It may be arbitrary but that doesn't mean it isn't real. National boarders are arbitrary but they are very real. But in the same case as with countries, what gives us the right as a species to go a moon and claim it. Is it a right based on force, an ethical right, a right of first claim? The very idea of colonization assumes certain rights. The question is what are those rights based on? And no I'm not trolling. It's sad that we are prepared to discuss ideas without being prepared to discuss the underlying philosophies. I'm simply saying that before we consider what to colonize or how, we should consider whether the very notion of space colonization is valid. This isn't a moot point. If we're wrong, at worst it could mean the end of our species. All cases of colonization on earth have lead to genocide or war... no exceptions. Why do we think space colonization will be different?
• mentos 7y ago
  What’s more likely in the next 5000 years that we colonize Mars or that we scan the human brain and move it to software so that it doesn’t need a specialized atmosphere to persist?
  • chr1 7y ago
    That's a very interesting question. I would guess that if moving brain into software is at all possible, there will be very little reason to build anything other than huge computers, and maybe that's the answer to Fermi paradox.
• mothsonasloth 7y ago
  How does this Methane develop on Titan vs. other hydrocarbons (Ethane, Propane) etc. ? Could we not bomb Titan with some sort of water catalyser and burn up a large amount of Methane? Certainly would be good as a fuel source.
• siffland 7y ago
  Serious question, since this is out of my swim lane. The Author keeps talking about the effects of Galactic Cosmic Rays, do we have any usable materials we can build habitats out of that can block them? I mean usable in the sense we can produce in scale and they are non toxic to humans.
  • TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
    One of the simplest methods would be to bury habitats in conjunction with materials to block cosmic rays.
  • ryanmercer 7y ago
    Any material will work if thick enough. Thick concrete, water/ice. It just has to be thick enough to also handle the secondary radiation from higher energy stuff. We're talking a need for several feet of concrete or several inches of lead. For a rocky body like Mars the 'easiest' solution is simply excavate trenches to put your habitats in and then piling several meters of regolith over the top, or using lava tubes/caves. If excavating was too difficult you could similarly just make bricks of compressed/fused regolith and pile them up. Titan has a rocky core but is mostly ice where a manned mission would be, there you'd probably just carve out large blocks of ice and place them around your habitat. The best universal solution would probably be some sort of sandwich of materials that was still decently thick.
  • Balgair 7y ago
    For Cosmic Rays the only thing is just a lot of atomic nuclei. You need pure mass. This is why a transit to Mars or Saturn is going to be hard for us to pull off in the near term. All those nuclei are expensive to get into orbit right now. Outside of that, there is a 'graded Z' shield. Here, you make a layer cake of various atomic nuclei (the Zs), going from heavier to lighter. Typically Tantalum down to Tin and down to Aluminum. They physics here aren't super important, but for lower energy radiation, you can get down to a 60% mass reduction for similar shielding protection. The problem is that it's the higher energy radiation that you are worried about, the Cosmic Rays. Graded Z shields pretty much work like anything else at those energies. Under our current physics mumbo-jumbo, you just need nuclei.
• 0-_-0 7y ago
  The page is "temporarily unavailable" for me. To help in your fight against paywalled and temporarilty unavailable pages, here's this (officially recommended) Firefox extension that looks up the current page in one of 18 web archives: https://github.com/dessant/web-archives https://github.com/dessant/web-archives
• yardie 7y ago
  If you can you should check out the TV series Avenue 5. It’s a sci-fi comedy and whoever they hired to do their science is really knocking it out the park. Some of the true science I’ve seen in the shown: the ship is massive enough to have its own gravity. Objects that get lost in space don’t float away. They orbit the ship. They use passenger effluent as a cosmic radiation shield. And due to an anomaly they don’t get flung off into space. Their orbit gets wider so instead of a year trip it’s now 5. Oh and the real engineers work in the basement of the ship. The bridge crew are actors.
  • rc_mob 7y ago
    You basically spoiled the entire show now :)
  • SteveSmith16384 7y ago
    I watched the first 3-4 episodes. It was a polished show and the realistic take on science was a breath of fresh air, but it seemed like the story stopped going anywhere.
    • stevenwoo 7y ago
      I’m a masochist - after eight episodes this is the most disappointing TV show ever based on creators previous work. It’s like an improv or stand up gone bad for five hours.
  • carapace 7y ago
    I gotta disagree. The physics in the show is disappointingly cartoonish in my opinion. The ship is not massive enough for it's gravity to capture the, uh, various items in the orbit shown. Even the orbital mechanics of the delay are just a plot device.
    • stevenwoo 7y ago
      The latest episode has people freezing solid after leaving through an airlock almost instantaneously- someone on earth survived a longer exposure to vacuum but at closer to room temperature in a suit failure.
• hwestiii 7y ago
  The Dr.Manhattan Project?
• Symmetry 7y ago
  I'd tend to Jupiter's outer big moon, Callisto, as a good place to live. The surface is a vacuum, sure, but it's got surface ice which probably has liquid water underneath making it (and Ganymede and Europa for the same reason, and Venus 50 km up, and Earth) one of the few places in the solar system you could theoretically go outside with just a breather and no space suit. Plus it's got protection from charged particles via Jupiter's magnetic field without suffering from Jupiter's own radiation. And you've got both volatiles and minerals accessible on the surface which strikes me as really nice.
  • _sbrk 7y ago
    All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.
    • Symmetry 7y ago
      Fine, the surface is very radioactive (but it's safe under the ice) and there aren't any exposed mineral deposits so you can have it. :)
• b34r 7y ago
  Someone read the Kurt Vonnegut book, The Sirens of Titan!
• shawkinaw 7y ago
  > The weak gravity—similar to the Moon’s—combined with the thick atmosphere would allow individuals to aviate with wings on their backs. Sign me up.
• JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Is it impractical to protect space colonizes with powerful superconducting magnets to deflect harmful radiation?
• davidhyde 7y ago
  It’s “Scientific” American yet they quote negative 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Use kelvin for low temperatures or, if you have to, at least degrees Celsius. For the benefit of the reader -300 F is 89 kelvin or -184 Celsius which is about 10 degrees c above liquid nitrogen’s boiling point.
  • tantalor 7y ago
    The article is about human colonization, so Fahrenheit is more appropriate unit because it represents human compatible temperature ranges better than C or K.
    • 3solarmasses 7y ago
      Exactly. Very few people get this. Fahrenheit is better for communicating temperatures in daily life. Plus we can be more precise in our language due to the expanded scale. e.g. We can say 62 degrees F, rather than 16.6667 degrees C.
      • shawabawa3 7y ago
        > Exactly. Very few people get this. Fahrenheit is better for communicating temperatures in daily life. Literally the entire rest of the world disagrees with you I've never needed a less than 1 degree unit for describing temperature, except in scientific contexts, where using 2 decimal places is fine I don't see why "100 ~= body temperature (with fever)" is a useful scale point. Or why 32F = freezing is useful in daily life
        • athenot 7y ago
          Normal body temperature was defined† in Celsius, at 37ºC; this explains the decimal when used in Fahrenheit (98.6F). So even that argument of convenience doesn't hold. † Yes everyone's baseline temperature is slightly different, but that just makes the decimal on the Fahrenheit scale look even sillier. And fever definitions are also keyed off of Celsius: 37º to 38º is "low grade". Sure, it's an arbitrary convention but it's the one adopted around the world, including in the US (98.6 to 100.4).
• tekkk 7y ago
  Hmm. I have always considered low-gravity to be quite a big issue for any planetary colonization. Unless some cure is invented like a genetic mutation, it would seem that there is no way of coming back to Earth after spending a lifetime in eg 0.2 G. This in mind I have always thought that Venus would make the best candidate in the solar system. With 0.9 G it would be as close as we could possible get to Earth yet however I have to admit, having no magnetosphere would be a giant pain in the ass. But since Venus already has a thick atmosphere, it would seem that after the required amount of gas has been removed, it would stay stable whereas in Mars you'd constantly have to offset the escaping gas. Possibly though that would not be an issue, since we are pretty great at the green-house gas generation. But yeah, Mars would definitely be the easiest to terraform. But you wouldn't come back to Earth from there. And you'd mostly spend your life in bunkers underground to avoid getting beamed to death by the solar wind, same as with Venus. Unless we some day find a way to achieve immunity against it.
  • Dumblydorr 7y ago
    Mars is definitely the easiest place to colonize, by far. It's much closer than the gas giants, there's no craft capable of taking people to Saturn even devised, let alone constructed. Meanwhile, we have SpaceX actively building a rocket for Martian colonization. Second, the Venusian atmosphere is oppressive as hell, you'll not be solving that problem anytime soon, as we can't even solve Earth's much easier atmospheric GHG problem. Martian colonization will be tough. 30% gravity, 3% atmospheric pressure, radiation, very cold, very dry... however, building a base is conceivable and we think we know how to do it.
    • tekkk 7y ago
      True Venus' atmosphere is quite hostile, but from what I briefly read Venus quite probably have had a similar atmosphere with Earth (along with Mars) in the early days, before the runaway green-house effect got the best of it, so at least in theory it should be possible to transform it back. With autonomous robots perhaps it could be done in a span of million years. Maybe. A relatable analogue might be removing liquid from a glass with a tiny straw. Yet I'd think it is easier to remove, than to add material when speaking about terraforming.
• throwawaymanbot 7y ago
  lets fix this planet first shall we? :)
• hristov 7y ago
  Great idea. We should use Titan to build a bunch of insane asylums there. And then perhaps we can neglect the insane asylums, the patients can escape and start their own societies based on the type of disease they have.
• solarengineer 7y ago
  This reminds me of Wanderers, by Erik Wernquist. https://vimeo.com/108650530 https://vimeo.com/108650530 There's a scene at the end when one of our future generation looks at the surface of Saturn while standing on a station floating atop a Saturnian moon. Very motivational. Other videos by Erik Wernquist are motivational too: New Horizons: https://vimeo.com/132183032 https://vimeo.com/132183032
  • m4rtink 7y ago
    I think that scene is actually situated on an airship floating in the atmosphere of Saturn. The rings would be much too big to be seen like this from Titan, not to mention the Titan atosphere being pretty hazy.
  • LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    While the technical quality of these videos is very good, and i really, really like most Sci-Fi, why in hell is she wearing a fur collar on her hoodie over a full face mask, in space? THAT are things things turning me off, from full hard-on to instantly shrunken balls. Try this, this is where we are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCJzUiBZItk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCJzUiBZItk
• Vysero 7y ago
  It all seems like a huge waste of resources and effort to me. Personally, I would rather see all that money/resources going into developing some kind of FTLT. There are planets out there, way out there, which are much more suitable for life. Even without FTLT even if it takes us 2 generations to get there.
• beefman 7y ago
  The dangers of radiation on Mars are greatly exaggerated. The dangers of low gravity on Titan and elsewhere are greatly understated, as is the immense distance between Mars and Titan. A floating habitat on Venus is harder and less attractive in every way than a rotating space station, which is clearly our next milestone in space. In terms of planets though, there's a reason Mars gets the most attention: it's obviously the best choice.
  • Fjolsvith 7y ago
    The distance would be mitigated with a 1g thrust drive. It would reduce the transit time between Earth and Mars to three days, with the ship accelerating to midpoint and decelerating from there. We just need a craft that can thrust that strength for three days straight.
    • scrumbledober 7y ago
      A craft that can sustain a 1g thrust for three days straight is the most outlandish idea in this entire thread.
      • Fjolsvith 7y ago
        Maybe, but Phd's are thinking about it: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/30/flying-to-mars-in-three-days/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/30/flying-to-mars-in-... and https://www.skythisweek.info/constant1g.pdf https://www.skythisweek.info/constant1g.pdf
        • scrumbledober 7y ago
          talking about how it would be cool if we had a ship that could do that, and the implications of that. In no way is anyone with any serious education actually talking about HOW to possibly get a craft with the mass fraction and specific impulse to pull this off. we are several orders of magnitude off of this being possible when it comes to specific impulse, and the highest impulse engines we have have nowhere near enough thrust to weight.
• mannykannot 7y ago
  Am I missing something here? "On the surface, vast quantities of hydrocarbons in solid and liquid form lie ready to be used for energy. Although the atmosphere lacks oxygen, water ice just below the surface could be used to provide oxygen for breathing and to combust hydrocarbons as fuel." [my emphasis.] They are proposing splitting water to get oxygen for burning hydrocarbons to produce energy - but splitting water itself takes a lot of energy, and low-entropy energy at that. Could this process possibly result in a net increase in useful energy?
  • m4rtink 7y ago
    Even if it does not, you could use it as a nice chemical battery. Say you split some water ice using energy from you nuclear reactor (or possibly even a turbine in your methanoelectric dam!) and store the pressurized oxygen. Then you can use the stored oxygen with methane from the atmosphere to provide a lot of energy where needed, possibly far away from your main nuclear reactor, dam on a liquid methane river or other non-portable energy sources.
    • Bedon292 7y ago
      An example would be rocket fuel to leave, so you don't have to bring it all with you.
      • m4rtink 7y ago
        Definitely, can use it to power chemical rockets as well. :)
  • stromgo 7y ago
    I'll answer the energetic question. Splitting water produces oxygen and hydrogen, so with our oxygen we have the choice between burning hydrogen or burning Titan's hydrocarbons. Burning the hydrogen would bring us back to square one, so the question is whether burning hydrocarbons yields more energy than burning hydrogen. It appears to not be the case. Some numbers I found online: burning 1 mole of O2 with hydrogen yields 572 kJ burning 1 mole of O2 with methane yields 444 kJ burning 1 mole of O2 with butane yields 443 kJ burning 1 mole of O2 with octane yields 437 kJ burning 1 mole of O2 with glucose yields 467 kJ https://personal.utdallas.edu/~metin/Merit/MyNotes/energyScience2.pdf https://personal.utdallas.edu/~metin/Merit/MyNotes/energySci... https://www.ausetute.com.au/fuelenergy.html https://www.ausetute.com.au/fuelenergy.html
• wiz21c 7y ago
  Nitpicking, but ... If one says : >> We reached this conclusion after looking at the planets in a new way: ecologically then, why can he say : >> Housing could be made of plastic produced from the unlimited resources harvested Ecology is also about realizing that resources are limited.
• mistrial9 7y ago
  It is deeply disturbing to see a lot of effort put into colonizing another planet, while rampant pollution increases at Planet Earth. While science advances, at what opportunity cost? It Remains to be Seen if we have Spoiled the Nest. <--
• Ajedi32 7y ago
  Everyone in the comments here debating the merits of Mars vs the Moon vs Titan seems to have missed the whole point of this article. The author is arguing that anywhere other than Titan is infeasible due to recent research suggesting that Galactic Cosmic Rays cause significant brain damage (not just increased risk of cancer). In fact, the article argues that the danger is so severe that even getting to Titan quickly enough to mitigate the risk of brain damage during the trip will be a major challenge. If true, this complicates things significantly. Does anyone know if the dangers of Galactic Cosmic Rays are really as significant as the author is claiming? The author references the 2016 paper "Cosmic radiation exposure and persistent cognitive dysfunction"[1] which was a study conducted on mice. Has there been any further research into the possible effects of cosmic radiation exposure on humans? [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34774 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep34774
  • dumbfoundded 7y ago
    There's danger everywhere outside of Earth. All of the problems seem fixable except for gravity. We don't know if humans can even be born and raised in low gravity environments. Venus would seem to be the right choice for a long time scale. Maybe we could use the practice too at learning how to reverse a runaway greenhouse effect.
    • X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago
      An intervention free birth would be extremely hard, but C-sections have a very high success rate. If we have a large enough base we could easily make areas that have constant acceleration
  • WalterBright 7y ago
    I expect colonizing the solar system will not be completely practical without genetic modification of the colonists to partially adapt to local environments.
    • lukifer 7y ago
      One reason I'm bullish on humans being a stepping-stone to electronic/software life forms, is that we are ill-equipped in every way to meaningfully travel the universe: from short life spans, to radiation vulnerability, to the complexity of converting electrical energy into bio-available energy, to psychological effects of long journeys in cramped quarters. Software-life, on the other hand, can tailor its physical form(s) to particular environments, consume solar/nuclear energy directly, and even shut off its consciousness during long journeys. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of solar system colonization, interstellar generational ships, etc; and manual genetic manipulation (or repair) may be a necessary tool to accomplish that. But in terms of life forms being well-adapted to their ecological niche, humans becoming a space-faring species is a billion times more difficult than a mudskipper learning to breathe air.
• bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Technically, much of the spaces needed for food production or other industries on mars don't need to be underground to protect Humans from radiation. Plants and machines can tolerate it much better, and a Mars colony can't sustain itself without levels of automation that look ridiculous to our present day.
• jaspergilley 7y ago
  This article projects too linearly to the future: terraforming Mars, for instance, would probably be easier right now than getting people to Titan quickly. Seems like an article written for the purpose of getting clicks by being contrarian, not seriously investigating the science
• bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Both Mars and Titan currently lack an economical reason to try and live there. As long as it's just about the science or bragging rights, it will be completely paid for from earth's resources, instead of building on its own. Any idea what tangible "export products" could make a Mars colony sustainable? I don't think space tourism is enough.
  • mjevans 7y ago
    Re: Economics 'The belt' would best be mined by automated, semi-remote controlled machines. The Moon offers a good target to fire those resources at (aim to roughly keep it's orbital momentum the same), a low but not No G fab area with easy access to 'free' vacuum, and is usefully close to Earth orbits. Mars... I can't really think of any particular thing it does better offhand, that couldn't instead... Lagrange Points (L4 and L5) offer areas usefully distant from Earth for scientific and world-ending-event backup purposes, have a relatively low escape velocity, and are "safer" in that they draw masses to stay near them. This would be a great place to park a large rock (for shielding) and core out the inside. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
    • kyuudou 7y ago
      Reminds me of what they did with the space station in Seveneves!
• baron816 7y ago
  The whole idea of colonizing other parts of the solar system just seems like a fool’s errand to me. Colonizing Antarctica or even the bottom of the oceans seems like a more practical endeavor to me. As uninhabitable as Antarctica is, just think about the advantages it has over a place like Mars or Titan: a breathable Earth pressure atmosphere, 1G gravity, abundant water, not outrageously extreme temperatures, low radiation levels, close to civilization, etc. Probably most importantly, you don’t have to escape Earth’s gravitational pull to get there. In fact, you can use one of humankind’s earliest inventions—a boat. If we were really afraid of an extinction level event such as a nuclear war or extreme climate change, humanity could survive by doing the same sorts of things here that we would have to do on Mars—building large underground habitats. Except, we could survive in much larger numbers since it would be so so so much cheaper to build those habitats here.
  • njarboe 7y ago
    People don't dream of traveling to other planets to create a backup civilization for Earth. That is what those people tell the ones who don't understand their dream and why they should support it. People want to explore because a certain segment of the population would love the adventure, danger, excitement, thrill, and exotic experience. One also has the chance of creating new places outside of existing governance structures. A group of people who start building a city on Antarctica would likely be kicked off by force in a short period of time. On Mars, who knows?
    • abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      "We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars." Carl Sagan
  • LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    But... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System Need to cancel that first. Probably with war. What do think is more likely? That happening here without war, or starting "elsewhere" from scratch, leaving the planet of the apes behind?
• lurquer 7y ago
  Let's start with a self-sustainable colony at the South Pole. Or, for that matter, a self-sustainable colony in Death Valley. "But even if we could, why would anyone want to?" you might ask... And that's the point. Nobody would want to as there is no economic reason to be there. My two cents: we'll never colonize a moon or planet. There are, on the other hand, some economic perks to manufacturing in zero-g. Consequently, I'd put my money in massive orbiting space stations.
• LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
  OMG! It's full of fumes! All the times! That is all i could think about when reading about the hydrocarbons. Imagine having to live in the all permeating STINK of a gas station, or worse (petro)chemical factory. /me shudders
• SEJeff 7y ago
  There has been a few people I've read about proposing a solution to this on Mars. Mars is absolutely chock full of these "lava tubes" caused by old long dormant volcanos. If those could be sealed, they could be used for humans to live in effectively shielded from this sort of thing. Sure it would be difficult, but so would everything on mars. The great thing is that there are lots of these lava tubes that could potentially be inhabited. https://phys.org/news/2017-09-lava-tubes-hidden-sites-future.html https://phys.org/news/2017-09-lava-tubes-hidden-sites-future... https://www.inverse.com/article/36777-mars-moon-human-colony-lava-tubes https://www.inverse.com/article/36777-mars-moon-human-colony...