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Liquid hydrocarbons? You'll sink like a brick. I don't know exactly what methane and ethane do at minus whatever but the density is at least 30% lower than wate
by isoprophlex 2y ago
Liquid hydrocarbons? You'll sink like a brick. I don't know exactly what methane and ethane do at minus whatever but the density is at least 30% lower than water...
- eru 2y agoWikipedia says 422.8 g/L (liquid, −162 °C). (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane) So nothing you could swim in, but it would be relatively easy to build a boat. Hmm, come to think of it: Titan's gravity is 0.138 g. So you might be able to stay afloat in liquid methane by actively swimming upwards, even if you can't float. Similar to how birds stay afloat in the air, despite being heavier than air.
- lazide 2y agoIf you thought huffing was bad for your brain cells though…. Wouldn’t it dissolve a lot of things, including space suit seals? If it wasn’t for the extreme cold embrittlement anyway.
- rightbyte 2y agoSurely there are seals suitable for methane?
- lazide 2y agoMovable ones? At the temperatures methane is a liquid?
- eru 2y agoYou could perhaps build them out of ethanol or so? Basically, you wouldn't want to build them out of materials that are useful at human room temperature, but you could perhaps build them out of materials that are liquid or even a gas on earth, but solid at Titan's temperatures. (No clue whether ethanol would be good, it solidifies at -114.1C, but I have no clue what kind of solid it would be.)
- eru 2y agoYes, I was ignoring the effects of low temperature here.
- kombookcha 2y agoThere is something super raygun gothic about walking on the bottom of the liquid hydrocarbon sea in an old timey lead-boot diving suit.