Jump to content

Mining Titan, was it really worth it?


ARS

Recommended Posts

Mining methane from Titan (Saturn's moon). I mean, sure there's a lot of methane and hydrocarbon lakes which makes it a potential moon to be colonized and mined for fuels. But considering the distance from the earth, was it really worth for a mining operation to basically establish a mining site on titan, mine the methane, refine it as fuel, and transport it back to earth? Cassini-Huygens mission took almost seven years to reach Saturn flyby, and it's a one-way trip. Considering the time it takes between sending the mining operation to the arrival of fuel from Titan, was it really worth all the effort? (Assuming we are able to establish a colony on Titan)

Replies are appreciated :)

Edited by ARS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

No, I think that would be quite mad. I would make use of it locally to support the colony.

That's what I'm thinking. Personally, it's still surprising many people consider TItan as the potential fuel mining site for earth in the future

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that mining methane from Titan and using it only as a fuel is an incredibly wasteful thing,  especially if it just to return it to Earth instead of using it for space refuelling.

But, Titan's atmosphere is still incredibly useful for colonization as it contains useful gasses, such as :

  • Nitrogen, which can be used as a oxygen diluent so that we can make artificial air in space, and it can also be converted to ammonia and fertilizer
  • Methane, which if someone actually found a magic catalyst that makes oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) possible, we will be able to convert methane into ethene (ethylene), which is an ingredient for popular polymers such as polyethylene, PVC, polystyrene, and other incredibly useful organic compounds, such as ethanol. Even if OCM is not feasible, there is still considerable concentration of ethane in the atmosphere that can be converted to ethene through steam cracking

With fertilizer from nitrogen, water from Saturn's ring ice, and carbon dioxide from burning methane, large scale farming can be done near Titan, and the ethene can be used to supply organic chemical based manufacturing, which will supply important polymers for building spaceships and other technology. With helium-3 from Saturn to refuel possible fusion power reactors and fusion drives, a space colony in Saturn system is an ideal place to resupply food, water, air for the humans, and fuel and propellant for the spaceships. The problem is that there is no metal asteroid nearby, so the colony needs to import metal for expansion and building spaceship from asteroid belt, unless somehow they can substitute the metal with locally produced polymers, which is another story.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don;t know if you are talking about current day levels of technology or if you meant near future levels of technology (+100 years).

In my opinion if we become technologically evolved enough to a point where we can build (manned) large scale missions to Saturn, probably using (SC/GC) NTR propulsion, using local methane as the reaction mass would be very beneficial (ignoring the engineering issues of soot buildup for a second).

Even if humanity skipped NTR propulsion and got straight to fusion drives. Using methane as a reaction mass would imo still be better than needing to skim a gas giants atmosphere, with all inherent risks in doing so, in order to refill the reaction mass tanks.

Other thing to take note of, if we ever reach that level of technology where reaching Saturn is not a death warrent, harvesting methane from Titan would then already have become relatively easy. Landing on solar bodies would have become common place, Titan would be not much of a challenge.

But if you are talking about current tech levels, than I fully agree it's ludicrous and not feasible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My big concern would be if they find something alive on Titan. I know it seems far-fetched, but I've heard several times lately from prominent scientists there might be a slight chance of finding some sort of life form... albeit really, really primitive and strange, on Titan. 

If this does turn out to be true, then hands off... we stay away from Titan, or anywhere else we might find some life form (like Encelidus or Europa).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Just Jim said:

My big concern would be if they find something alive on Titan. I know it seems far-fetched, but I've heard several times lately from prominent scientists there might be a slight chance of finding some sort of life form... albeit really, really primitive and strange, on Titan. 

If this does turn out to be true, then hands off... we stay away from Titan, or anywhere else we might find some life form (like Encelidus or Europa).

At least until McDonald's can figure out a way to put it into a sandwich.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Heat production of Methane = 50 MJ/kg = (50*106 * 2)1/2 = 10 km/s

As you need much more than 10 km/s to deliver some methane from Titan to the Earth, that means it's cheaper to synthesize methane right on the Earth from water and CO2 rather than deliver it from Titan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Just Jim said:

My big concern would be if they find something alive on Titan. I know it seems far-fetched, but I've heard several times lately from prominent scientists there might be a slight chance of finding some sort of life form... albeit really, really primitive and strange, on Titan. 

If this does turn out to be true, then hands off... we stay away from Titan, or anywhere else we might find some life form (like Encelidus or Europa).

Like hydrocarbon-based microorganism?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If we get beefy propulsion systems but lack the ability to synthesize certain polymers from raw hydrogen/carbon, than it will be. Good low gravity source of carbon. Few of those around here. Although if we get fusion tech, we could just grab a boat load of hydrogen and do some fusing to get the needed carbon...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

90% or so of the polymers currently being produced, are just polyethylene and polypropylene.

Being synthesized from hydrocarbons, usually. Titan is the best place for hydrocarbons in the solar system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having worked in the natural gas industry here on Earth I can say that we have no shortage of it right below our feet.   So, no it wouldn't really be useful to ship methane back from Titan.   On the other hand it would make sense to ship helium 3 from Saturn to Earth given it's rarity here on Earth, and Titan's hydrocarbons might be useful for that purpose, but that presupposes that we have a fusion reactor with which we can make use of the helium 3.   Maybe someday there will be a helium trade between Saturn and Earth, but not a methane trade. :)

Edited by Finox
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, YNM said:

Titan is smaller than Earth. Titan has less mass (and matter) than Earth. Titan has less resouce than Earth. Titan is far from Earth.

∴ No mining on Titan.

Current estimates show that Titan has far more hydrocarbons than Earth. From NASA:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html

If we ever get around to colonizing the Solar System... we're going to be mining Titan. 

1 hour ago, Finox said:

Having worked in the natural gas industry here on Earth I can say that we have no shortage of it right below our feet.   So, no it wouldn't really be useful to ship methane back from Titan.   On the other hand it would make sense to ship helium 3 from Saturn to Earth given it's rarity here on Earth, and Titan's hydrocarbons might be useful for that purpose, but that presupposes that we have a fusion reactor with which we can make use of the helium 3.   Maybe someday there will be a helium trade between Saturn and Earth, but not a methane trade. :)

Sure. For the foreseeable future. But that won't be enough for a solar system wide civilization. It's main use will be raw materials for hydrocarbon based products, though, as burning it isn't the best idea... beamed power would be far more effective. Certainly not shipped back to Earth, at least not in its raw state.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/23/2017 at 7:56 AM, ARS said:

That's what I'm thinking. Personally, it's still surprising many people consider TItan as the potential fuel mining site for earth in the future

Who are those "many people"? The idea is mindbogglingly stupid and would (if done... but that won't happen) wreck the climate even faster.

 

Low hydrocarbons on Titan are present in abundance only in the lakes and they would be useful as sources of hydrogen for atomic rockets as an orbital propellant. The source of energy for stripping hydrogen away would be uranium fission.

I can see that happening in less than 200 years. Titan is small and its gravity well isn't a great obstacle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What's that fuzz about mining solar system bodies anyway ? What do they have that we don't have here ? There is no technology, no patience nor even the will to do so. We don't even know whether anything suitable is there in a form that can be "mined" at all. Hydrocarbons ? How many thousand thousand tons would you have to burn to get a single one back ? Yeah, they may run out, but we might use much less in the future when electric transportation slowly takes over (assuming political will here). It'll be easier to "mine" lumps of ore from the ocean floor. How much energy, effort and resources would it take to build, launch and maintain the necessary equipment ? Far out of range for any economy i can imagine. Its pure sci-fy, if at all.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Green Baron said:

What's that fuzz about mining solar system bodies anyway ? What do they have that we don't have here ? There is no technology, no patience nor even the will to do so. We don't even know whether anything suitable is there in a form that can be "mined" at all. Hydrocarbons ? How many thousand thousand tons would you have to burn to get a single one back ? Yeah, they may run out, but we might use much less in the future when electric transportation slowly takes over (assuming political will here). It'll be easier to "mine" lumps of ore from the ocean floor. How much energy, effort and resources would it take to build, launch and maintain the necessary equipment ? Far out of range for any economy i can imagine. Its pure sci-fy, if at all.

 

 

You do realize that there's hundreds of times as many hydrocarbons on Titan than on Earth, right? Organic molecules are very useful for so many things. We may use less per person in the future, sure, but less overall? I don't think that'll be the case. Lots of people want to terraform Mars. That's gonna need a lot of organic molecules and volatiles. Titan and the other outer planets' moons are perfect for this. But even then, terraforming is super sci fi. But so we're atomic weapons...

We would likely use some form of nuclear propulsion to ship it out. Maybe Orion/Medusa drives, as there's no problem with using them in interplanetary space. Although I can think of many alternatives, pulse propulsion offers the benefit of not needing huge radiators...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/8/2017 at 8:38 PM, Green Baron said:

What's that fuzz about mining solar system bodies anyway ? What do they have that we don't have here ? There is no technology, no patience nor even the will to do so. We don't even know whether anything suitable is there in a form that can be "mined" at all. Hydrocarbons ? How many thousand thousand tons would you have to burn to get a single one back ? Yeah, they may run out, but we might use much less in the future when electric transportation slowly takes over (assuming political will here). It'll be easier to "mine" lumps of ore from the ocean floor. How much energy, effort and resources would it take to build, launch and maintain the necessary equipment ? Far out of range for any economy i can imagine. Its pure sci-fy, if at all.

 

 

You're focusing on combusting them, which is not something that would even be done. Hydrocarbons are precious because they're used to make various chemicals. You make solvents with them, polymers, reagents.

The horror of depleting the viably accessible fossil fuels is not the fact energy will be harder to come by (uranium fission is available and plentiful), but the raw material to make stuff we need. Chemical industry would suffer profoundly and that's the base of our society's survival.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/8/2017 at 11:19 AM, lajoswinkler said:

Who are those "many people"? The idea is mindbogglingly stupid

^ This.  The economics simply don't make sense.  Shipping that sort of bulk material interplanetary is ridiculously inefficient.  Nobody's ever going to be mining Titan for hydrocarbons to use on Earth.  We don't have the engineering capacity to do it, now.  And if, at some point in the future, we ever do develop that kind of capacity... well, then we won't need the material from Titan, because we'll have the technical wherewithal to get it here.

I just don't see any window of time, ever, where it will be both 1. possible, and 2. needed.  By the time it becomes possible, it won't be needed.

On 5/8/2017 at 2:07 PM, Bill Phil said:

You do realize that there's hundreds of times as many hydrocarbons on Titan than on Earth, right?

Yup.  But it's a case of "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".  Or, more to the point, a kilogram of methane on Earth is worth many, many kilograms of methane on Titan... if you're using it on Earth.

There are many years of transit time and many km/sec of dV between Titan and Earth.  That's what makes it not worthwhile.

Mining astronomical bodies for materials makes great sense... if you're using the stuff locally.  "Hey, we can mine it here, and use it here, instead of shipping it from Earth" is a fantastic idea.  But it's utterly ridiculous to ship it to Earth for use on Earth.

The only type of commodity that might conceivably make sense for that sort of thing would have to be something with an insanely high value per kilogram, and/or which isn't available on Earth.  For example, helium-3 from the Moon, as a potential fusion fuel, springs to mind.  There may be other candidates as well.

But bulk methane and other hydrocarbons ain't it.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

You're focusing on combusting them, which is not something that would even be done. Hydrocarbons are precious because they're used to make various chemicals. You make solvents with them, polymers, reagents.

The horror of depleting the viably accessible fossil fuels is not the fact energy will be harder to come by (uranium fission is available and plentiful), but the raw material to make stuff we need. Chemical industry would suffer profoundly and that's the base of our society's survival.

Nope. My intention was rather to point out that it is incredibly inefficient (and impossible with current technology) to mine anything in industrial quantities anywhere else than on earth. To get just a spoonful of anything from even the moon to earth is totally beyond any economic reasoning. Just take a look at the energy balance for getting there and back again (a CH2 molecule's tale).

Even if hydrocarbons (for whatever application you might imagine) would run out it would make much more sense to find workarounds, other technologies like electricity for transportation, production of surrogates through bacteria (SciFi, i know :-)) or something that has yet to be invented.

Right now "we" aren't even able to establish a colony on the moon, or in the deserts on earth or at the south pole. The few scientists/military men and women there had no chance if they weren't supplied from outside. Becoming sick at the south pole in winter is life threatening.

Fully robotic and self sustaining plants don't even exist on earth because maintenance, replacement, use wear. The idea of mining other bodies is a play of the mind, a computer game. The enthusiasm might be awesome, but it's unrealistic.

:-)

Edited by Green Baron
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Snark said:

^ This.  The economics simply don't make sense.  Shipping that sort of bulk material interplanetary is ridiculously inefficient.  Nobody's ever going to be mining Titan for hydrocarbons to use on Earth.  We don't have the engineering capacity to do it, now.  And if, at some point in the future, we ever do develop that kind of capacity... well, then we won't need the material from Titan, because we'll have the technical wherewithal to get it here.

I just don't see any window of time, ever, where it will be both 1. possible, and 2. needed.  By the time it becomes possible, it won't be needed.

Yup.  But it's a case of "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".  Or, more to the point, a kilogram of methane on Earth is worth many, many kilograms of methane on Titan... if you're using it on Earth.

There are many years of transit time and many km/sec of dV between Titan and Earth.  That's what makes it not worthwhile.

Mining astronomical bodies for materials makes great sense... if you're using the stuff locally.  "Hey, we can mine it here, and use it here, instead of shipping it from Earth" is a fantastic idea.  But it's utterly ridiculous to ship it to Earth for use on Earth.

The only type of commodity that might conceivably make sense for that sort of thing would have to be something with an insanely high value per kilogram, and/or which isn't available on Earth.  For example, helium-3 from the Moon, as a potential fusion fuel, springs to mind.  There may be other candidates as well.

But bulk methane and other hydrocarbons ain't it.

 

It's "possible" now, believe it or not. Certainly impractical, but possible. At least in the sense that we can develop the infrastructure to do it and then subsequently do it. It'd be heinously expensive, of course.

It's a matter of how big you want the ship to be. If you want something about as big as modern oil tankers, you'd need either laser sail propulsion or some kind of nuclear pulse propulsion to scoot around the solar system at decent speeds. 100 km/s is actually pretty decent, as you can cross 10 AU in about 6 months. The real challenge is building a spaceship with enough ISP. But we can do that, using nuclear pulse. That should be old hat by now, but we're not so lucky.

If we're looking at modern civilization, then of course it's insane to mine Titan. The cost is huge, the benefit won't pay off the cost for centuries, and we're beginning to move away from the biggest use of hydrocarbons: burning it. But in the far flung future? Any raw material, especially volatiles, will be extremely useful. Titan is perfect for this. Earth's carbon cycle shouldn't be interrupted to terraform Mars, or build colonies in free space. Titan is a great source of carbon and other organic molecules. Terraforming is super pie in the sky, but orbital colonies aren't so much of a stretch. They have the potential to evolve from space hotels. They can start as rotating bolas and eventually become cities in their own right. After all, hotels need staff. And they need to actually have other things to do in their area... It's not as much a fantasy as terraforming, at the very least.

It's possible, the laws of physics do not forbid it. Economic concerns, as well as technology, are the main prevention. Even so, eventually we'll be able to extract resources from Titan.

There's no way we can have the technical ability to create 100x as many hydrocarbons than there are already are on this planet. Physics doesn't allow that. There's only so much Carbon in the Carbon Cycle. Would we need it? Most likely not. But even if we did, by that time it would be very likely that most humans wouldn't even be living on Earth anymore. You'd need a solar system wide civilization for the economy and technology to mine Titan. As well as the demand.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush only goes so far. Eventually the bird in the hand will no longer be in the hand, and the two in the bush is way, way bigger than the one in the hand.

The infrastructure, from extraction to transportation, is actually very expensive, even on Earth. The average cost of an offshore oil rig is 650 million USD. Given a total of 1470 offshore rigs in the world, that's almost a trillion dollars worth of drilling rigs. So why is oil so cheap (relatively)? Because it produces a LOT of it, for a long time. What can a trillion get us for Titan mining? Hard to say, although it isn't likely it will be cheaper than Earth-based platforms.

There is certainly a lot of Detla-V. But if we're talking minimums here, it's about as much as going from Earth's surface to LEO. Heinlein wasn't kidding when he said that orbit is halfway to anywhere. Remember that both Earth and Titan have atmospheres, which will help braking for our minimalist approach.  A cheaper way to orbit will go a long way. As will nuclear thermal/pulse rockets, at least in space and far from Earth. And if the trend of greater energy availability per person continues, the energy to go from Titan to Earth will be negligible in the not so far future.

It's not inherently ridiculous to ship it to Earth. It's entirely possible that future law will prevent oil and hydrocarbon extraction on the surface of Earth. Not likely, but possible. Meaning that the best source would be Titan. The energy cost per kg for a 100 km/s round trip from Titan to Earth is about 280 USD as of now, not counting inefficiency. But that can easily be cheaper in a future with a solar system wide civilization. Of course, this would only really apply to a laser sail...

And of course, Titan will be great for any activities in the Saturn System.

Helium-3 isn't worth it at all when mined from the Moon. The sheer amount of material you'd have to sift through to get a decent number would make the thing very impractical. Saturn still outshines the Moon even for Helium 3. It has far more, and it's easier to sift through gasses than solids, and easier to actually work on, as Saturn only has slightly more than 1g of gravity at it's "surface." The only issue is distance, but if we have fusion by then, we basically have torchships, and then distance doesn't matter nearly as much.

Bulk hydrocarbons are necessary for a solar system wide civilization. Even beyond fuel, it's truly amazing. Used in everything from medicine, to plastics, to synthetic fibers, to lubricant for moving parts, to artificial tires, it'll be very important for a long time to come. And if we ever leave Earth, we'll need a much larger source than the home world has to support our civilization.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mining titan only makes sense for ISRU, In Situ Utilization... not sending back to Earth. Sending them back would result in a lot resources wasted just sending it. So use it there, don't send it back to Earth.

On 4/23/2017 at 2:21 PM, Just Jim said:

My big concern would be if they find something alive on Titan. I know it seems far-fetched, but I've heard several times lately from prominent scientists there might be a slight chance of finding some sort of life form... albeit really, really primitive and strange, on Titan. 

If this does turn out to be true, then hands off... we stay away from Titan, or anywhere else we might find some life form (like Encelidus or Europa).

If there was life on the surface of Titan, in those methane/ethane lakes, its biochemistry would be so different, and the environment in which it could survive would be so different, that there would be basically no chance of cross contamination.

If there is a subsurface water ocean... then we'd want to avoid contact with that. We certainly want to keep any probe we would send to the subsurface water of Europa or Enceladus sterile (or water ice/RSL/subsurface of Mars).

But life on Titan... on the surface... would be amazing. Environments where it could survive would sterilize life from Earth, and vice versa. The science that could be done without risk of biosphere destruction would be amazing.

I assume you were referring to reports like this: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2010-190

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

But in the far flung future? Any raw material, especially volatiles, will be extremely useful.

Questionable.
The population growth limit is almost reached, 
Robots make things more and better than humans, most of humans will get unemployed in near future (even if treat "waiter" and "sale assistant" as "employed" right now).
Unlikely the humanity will be growing in far future. 

But surely, it will count every penny due to mass unemployment.
This means: 
* logistics optimization (2d→3d and traffic network reduction) — i.e. urbanization;
* immediate and permanent resource recycling — i.e. urbanization;
* public transportation instead of personal cars — i.e. urbanization;
* total win of corporations over small business, when "personal business" will mean "a personal freelancer's contract with a corporation" — i.e. urbanization;

So, most likely the survived humanity will live in overoptimized megacities, where
* every dropped piece of trash will be caught in midair, splitted and redirected to resource deposit;
* people look at anyone who drops a candy wrapper not into a trash can like at an ecoterrorist and a foe to every living;
* cars are crazy expensive, but nobody really needs them, crossing a city by tram;
* total electrification of everything;
* bicycles are prohibited outside of recreation zones;

And this means that the civilization will be moving as rocket closer and closer to a close-loop ecosystem inside planetary ecosystem.
With almost 99% of resources getting reused and only, say, 1% of resources which require mining.

In such case you need almost nothing beyond Earth, unless you find a rhodium spot on some asteroid.

P.S.
Helium-3 reactors are not enough easy to build them first, so before humanity can use He-3 as a fuel, it will have a high-performance fisson/fusion energetics.

In this case you can
* strain lithium right from the sea water,
* split its isotopes (happily, 6 vs 7 mass allow to do this absolutely easy.)
* expose Li-6 in numerous nuclear reactors getting tritium and storing it as a hydride;
* wait 12.5 years when it half-decays into the desired He-3.
*...
* Profit!!!
So, who needs that Moon, too. (1 g of He-3 per 100 t of lunar ground)

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...