Before Tooling Around on Titan

Great that the discovery of a liquid methane environment on Titan has all the space geeks so excited. Mission manager Jean-Pierre Lebreton says the Mars Rover team is already dreaming of roving on Titan.

"This is highly possible that we can now dream seriously of sending rovers on the surface of Titan. We just need the money," Lebreton explains.

Correct me if I'm wrong -- and my hard science training stopped with poking the innards of dead frogs -- but the solar-powered Mars rovers couldn't possibly work on Titan, could they? So in addition to money you'd need a world-wide green light to launch nuclear-powered probes toward Saturn.

Fine with me, Jean-Pierre.

Comments

[Stevo Darkly]

Your Titan rover would indeed need to be nuclear-powered, but there have been nuclear-powered probes or satellites launched before> They have been the targets of anti-nuke and environmentalist protests, but they were launched anyway.

[kevrob]

I'm no chemist, but methane's a pretty good fuel all by itself, isn't it? A Titan rover could gas up on the go, if properly constructed.

Kevin

[CodeMonkeySteve]

Fuck solar, the rover(s) would be (literally) swimming in a sea of fuel. Surely there's a way to convert it to electricity (is there enough O2 in the atmosphere to run a fuel cell?)

Better yet, land a stantionary fuel refinery, convert the atmosphere to stored electricity, and allow any number of rovers to come back periodically for a recharge?

Or you could just stick with the tried-and-true RTG system.

[Super Prole]

Hey, science geeks, please do not cause the federal government to tax me for your boondoggle to find methane-based lifeforms to have sex with.

Keep those libertarian principles even when they conflict with you nerdish lusts.

SP

[Stormy Dragon]

Why am I picturing a future where NASA has managed to accidentally set an entire moon on fire?

[NoStar]

Stormy, when you are that far from the sun, global warming is a good thing.

[thoreau]

Dude, setting a whole moon on fire would be so cool!

Why do you think we went into science in the first place? 😉

[db]

kevrob, methane is a great fuel--if you have an oxidizer (oxygen or otherwise). To my knowledge there is none easily available on Titan. If you could find water, you might be able to get some oxygen out of it. Then you could run the oxygen and methane through a fuel cell to get electricity.

The Cassini orbiter, which delivered the Huygens probe to Titan, is itself powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which are fueld by the readioactive decay of plutonium. The launch of Cassini was protested vigorously by Chicken Little no-nukes types.

Nuke power is the way to go in space--NASA is already working on "project Prometheus" (gotta love that name), which is developing nuclear propulsion and auxiliary power systems for the next generation of robotic explorers. The next Mars rover, tentatively scheduled for launch in 2009 I think, will be much larger than the current MER rovers and powered by a small nuke plant.

[db]

thoreau:

that would ROCK!

[SR]

"NASA is already working on 'project Prometheus' (gotta love that name)"

Does this mean the NASA director will have his liver torn out by an eagle each morning?

[Super Prole]

So taxes are bad when they're for food stamps and welfare but good when they're for sending remote control cars to another world.

Please do not encourage the president to spend even more of my money, even if it does lead to the discovery of hot, easy space crumpet.

You dudes are killing me today.

SP

[thoreau]

I never said it should be publicly funded, I just said that it would be cool if it happens.

There's a difference.

[Stevo Darkly]

What thoreau said.

[kevrob]

db, gotcha on the O2. SP: obviously, the Jupiter Mining Corporation* should be doing this exploring, bringing huge chunks of frozen CH4 back to earth orbit, where we can pipe it down a skyhook and heat homes with it and stuff. 🙂

* http://www.jupitermining.com/

Kevin

[Andy D]

If you really want to piss off the enviro types, we could send nuclear powered vehicles to Titan... those vehicles could scoop up tons and tons of methane and return it to Earth for use as fuel. Ahhh... global warming AND nuclear catastrophe!

[Sandy]

don't harsh my easy space crumpet buzz, prole.

[kmw]

Super Prole,

See, here's the problem. Sometime in the distant future, the Sun is going supernova, and we won't have a home.

Space exploration, even over the course of tens of thousands of years, will (hopefully) eventually provide a way for us to colonize other worlds. Thereby preserving the species.

I'm as anti-statism as they come, but this is one area I'd volunteer to cough up for. (Huygens was paid for by Europe, not NASA, anyway.)

It's hard to stand up for civil liberties when you're extinct.

[Chiznibitz]

A sensor about the size of a police officer's nightstick...

That comparison just struck me as odd (no pun intended). Seriously, is this something with which people have a lot of experience?

[Fin]

Also, couldn't certain aspects of NASA be viewed as an issue of national security?

[js]

"I'm as anti-statism as they come, but this is one area I'd volunteer to cough up for"

Why the 'but'? You are free to *volunteer* as much as you want for this area in an *anti-statist* manner (through charity or better yet corporate financing via stock/bond purchases).

[Douglas Fletcher]

"If you really want to piss off the enviro types, we could send nuclear powered vehicles to Titan... "

Nah, just send them to Phoenix. That way when the goofy company that owns the oil pipelines here in Arizona finds another leak at one of their old bubblegum & toilet paper patches, we'll be ready to roll.

[Wild Pegasus]

1. It's awesome to land something on a moon of Jupiter.

2. No, it shouldn't be publically-funded.

3. Project Prometheus is going to bring fire to Titan. That is, the whole moon is going ablaze.

4. The sun is scheduled to go supernovae in about a billion years. I'm actually less worried about that than I am about saving the children. More than likely it will never go supernovae since humans will have developed the technology to prevent it from happening.

- Josh

[db]

Lets all take up donations to send the children who we can't save to Titan to set it on fire for us.

Seriously, I want this to be done by private enterprise too, not by taxes. I have less of a problem spending a relatively small amount of government money on developing the technology to break the ground for a viable space economy, as long as the government gets out of the way as soon as private concerns take over.

And Titan is a moon of Saturn.

[db]

The really scary part will be when governments start fighting over who they can tax. What happens when the first business is headquartered on the moon, or some asteroid to which no nation has claim?

[Thomas Paine's Goiter]

Why the 'but'? You are free to *volunteer* as much as you want for this area in an *anti-statist* manner (through charity or better yet corporate financing via stock/bond purchases).

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SPAB&d=t

[isildur]

db,

re: issues of who will own what, and who will tax what, I recommend the excellent Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.

[Super Prole]

Present goods are more valuable than future goods. My time preference comes down squarely on 50 p less in taxes.

EU labor market reform would be awesome. Sending a remote control car to a distant hunk of rock is a minor technological achievement.

This is why liberalism will never catch on with the masses. You're (we're, I suppose) all geeks.

SP

[Bill Nye's clone]

Not to refute anyone's arguements or whatever, but I thought our sun is too small to go supernova. It's supposed to expand out to about the orbit of mars and become a red sun, and then eventually collapsse into a brown dwarf.

http://www.sunspot.noao.edu/sunspot/pr/answerbook/sun-evolution.html#q77

[kevrob]

Clone:

So there's plenty of time to build a Dyson sphere around the expanded sun, or a Ringworld. We can always light that failed star, Jupiter.

Kevin

[Dayton Kitchens]

I'd rather see money spent on space exploration that welfare anyday.

We should've had a manned mission to Mars long before now.

[Shawn Smith]

Well, actually, the latest I've read about the future of Sol is that it will become a planetary nebula. Once the outer layers have sloughed off, it will be a white, and eventually, a brown dwarf, with a relatively high amount of heavy elements. The planetary nebula stage isn't expected for another few billion years, though. And, of course, the source I read (in a recent issue of Scientific American) could be completely wrong.

As far as turning Jupiter into another star, It seems that it would take a lot more mass than the rest of the solar system has. I thought Jupiter would need about 10x its current mass to initiate fusion reactions, and Jupiter has more mass already than the other nine planets and their moons combined. Is the rest of the mass for a second star going to come from the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, or somewhere else (like 1:4:9 intelligent black obelisks)?

[Bill Nye's clone]

With two stars perhaps the ringworld would be an oval with two foci?

[David]

The Cassini probe to Titan WAS nuclear-powered -- it's powered by radioisotope thermal generators. Thus the controversy over its 1997 launch.

[Syd]

Titan won't burn because there is no free oxygen.

I was wondering why Huygens didn't use nuclear power, but then I realized the ESA might be worried about releasing radioisotopes by accident.

[cdunlea]

So, to tie everything up: how many of you would approve state action to keep Sol from going nova? Or should that be funded by private donations?

[Shawn Smith]

...than the other nine planets and their moons combined.

Gosh, sometimes I can be SOOO careless. The other eight planets and their moons combined. Sheesh.

And Bill Nye's clone,

Wouldn't the two stars orbit each other, with the distance between them changing? If that is the case, the ringworld would have to change its shape, wouldn't it? Also, where is all that matter going to come from? Maybe the technology that would permit a ringworld to be built would imply the technology to convert energy to matter (at the m = E / (c * c) rate at best, of course.)

[thoreau]

cdunlea-

I propose that the gov't tax each of us for $0.01, one time only. Invest that money at reasonable rates, and in a billion years use it to keep Sol from going nova.

That one-time penny tax is something I could endorse.

[Bill Nye's clone]

ss: Being a clone I had a vague memory of an oval having two foci, but nothing else in regards to putting an oval structure in a staable orbit around two stars.

Where would I get the material? Why from my handy "spontaneus hydrogen atom created out of vacuum" (SHACOOV) machine. It's meer child's play to then transmute the atoms into whatever is needed for construction.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

"I propose that the gov't tax each of us for $0.01, one time only. Invest that money at reasonable rates, and in a billion years use it to keep Sol from going nova.

That one-time penny tax is something I could endorse."

I would, too, if there was a way to keep politicians from raiding the fucking thing and leaving a 1 billion year IOU. Assclowns.

[thoreau]

I would, too, if there was a way to keep politicians from raiding the fucking thing and leaving a 1 billion year IOU. Assclowns.

Good point. I'll just put my penny into an account to be spent at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe instead. Maybe the Great Prophet Zarquon will show up for dinner!

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Yeah, I myself was thinking about spending a year dead for tax reasons.

[Stevo Darkly]

"I propose that the gov't tax each of us for $0.01, one time only. Invest that money at reasonable rates, and in a billion years use it to keep Sol from going nova.

That one-time penny tax is something I could endorse."

I would, too, if there was a way to keep politicians from raiding the fucking thing and leaving a 1 billion year IOU. Assclowns.

We could avoid that simply by putting the money in a lockbox.