Titan: A superior colony world compared to Mars.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, DerekL1963 said:

than can last at Titan temperatures

Arctic/Antarctic temperatures are also not fine. But they don't bury them in ice.
That's why the base needs a thermal insulation: to protect the equipment against cryofrost and to protect the frozen smelly fluids from being molten.
And Titan has a lot of material to use for this.

Edited February 6, 2017 by kerbiloid

[peadar1987]

4 hours ago, daniel l. said:

But would you put off a trip to Ireland because you have google maps?

Plenty of other reasons though

[Bill Phil]

18 hours ago, daniel l. said:

But would you put off a trip to Ireland because you have google maps?

Yes I would put it off, if it would take years or decades to get there at the fastest possible speed in the universe. Considering time dilation... maybe, if we can get fast enough.

20 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Tens meters, hundreds meters. There is a lot of freeware carbon there. And a foam consists mostly of nothing. Lot of nothing in  bubbles - what they call foam.
Enough to protect the underlaying cryo against melting.
Enough to protect the inner volume against space radiation.

They have enough carbon to produce carbon nanotubes for struts and trusses and to build huge arcs filling them with foam.
 

I believe the context was spacesuits...

Edited February 6, 2017 by Bill Phil

[daniel l.]

Just now, Bill Phil said:

Yes, if it would take years or decades to get there at the fastest possible speed in the universe. Considering time dilation... maybe, if we can get fast enough.

There are still things a probe can't do. Imagine looking at the footage?: "Wow! That's really cool! Hey whats that!?!?? NO!! GO TO THE INTERESTING THING! I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE ROCK!! DON'T YOU SEE THE ALIEN CITY YOU STUPID PIECE OF METAL?" *Bangs head against desk*

[Bill Phil]

Just now, daniel l. said:

There are still things a probe can't do. Imagine looking at the footage?: "Wow! That's really cool! Hey whats that!?!?? NO!! GO TO THE INTERESTING THING! I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE ROCK!! DON'T YOU SEE THE ALIEN CITY YOU STUPID PIECE OF METAL?" *Bangs head against desk*

Given the resources of the solar system, and the difficulty/large timescales of interstellar travel, it would be much more efficient to build humongous telescopes.

[daniel l.]

Just now, Bill Phil said:

Given the resources of the solar system, and the difficulty/large timescales of interstellar travel, it would be much more efficient to build humongous telescopes.

Still. You would experience time dilation. Meaning you would have no idea at all what was actually going in real time. Also there are material benefits to exploration by hand. Besides. Just because we can look at a road map with our satellites doesn't mean that orbital photography is good for studying say... the cellular structure of grass. You would have to actually send someone to look.

[Bill Phil]

Just now, daniel l. said:

Still. You would experience time dilation. Meaning you would have no idea at all what was actually going in real time. Also there are material benefits to exploration by hand. Besides. Just because we can look at a road map with our satellites doesn't mean that orbital photography is good for studying say... the cellular structure of grass. You would have to actually send someone to look.

Grass that likely doesn't exist.

[daniel l.]

1 minute ago, Bill Phil said:

Grass that likely doesn't exist.

I'm just making a point. How are you going to study things up close from far away? Even with the best telescopes it would be impossible to make out many details on an exoplanet. Even if you can get Google Earth level detail there still will be things you can't see.

[Bill Phil]

18 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

I'm just making a point. How are you going to study things up close from far away? Even with the best telescopes it would be impossible to make out many details on an exoplanet. Even if you can get Google Earth level detail there still will be things you can't see.

Yeah. But it turns out that starships are very hard to build...

[kerbiloid]

A thought experiment.
Just remove the Earth from the Solar System and ask yourself: what for to fly here?

And as most of planet systems probably are Solar Systems without the Earth, would you millenium by millenium send a starship to every of them?
Telescopes allow to select really interesting mission objectives many orders of magnitude cheaper and faster..
So, TTT _{Terra, Titan, Triton} scientific alliance would be not a colonization of useless moons but the first phase of interstellar expansion.

Edited February 7, 2017 by kerbiloid

[WinkAllKerb'']

37 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

And as most of planet systems probably are Solar Systems without the Earth, would you millenium by millenium send a starship to every of them?
 

this is where it may become more about "bus stop" along the way to "refuel" @low delta-v inter, from system to a system with earth/moon (eventually and may be) if most various being in the spaceship not morphed into "slime" lvl1 in between ^^

Edited February 7, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''
akira toriyama ref. yup tori yama

[daniel l.]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

A thought experiment.
Just remove the Earth from the Solar System and ask yourself: what for to fly here?

And as most of planet systems probably are Solar Systems without the Earth, would you millenium by millenium send a starship to every of them?
Telescopes allow to select really interesting mission objectives many orders of magnitude cheaper and faster..
So, TTT _{Terra, Titan, Triton} scientific alliance would be not a colonization of useless moons but the first phase of interstellar expansion.

The thing is though. Imagine it from the standpoint of a kid growing up. Let's assume your parents are reasonably wealthy. You grow up in a good sized house with plenty of luxuries. (This represents the Earth.) At first you make relatively little impact but in your teen years you start to trash the place with all your parties and other kinds of misbehavior. Eventually once you reach adulthood you might get kicked out of the house and forced to live on your own. Which means starting from scratch and building your own life. You move into a cheap apartment and make do with it while making subtle changes over time that build up to make a home.

This is similar to how i believe our expansion into space will go. Remember that the climate in Europe had everything that the Europeans could want. But the governments and living conditions were bad. So many of them left for America. Earth can technically provide everything we need. But as climate change makes it less habitable combined with the increasing scarcity of jobs and the millennia of ancient prejudices that we still cannot eliminate. Our life quality on Earth is declining. And even though theoretically it would be easy to fix, Our own ignorance blocks us. (Note how many people still deny climate change. Including the current US administration.) and eventually the quality of life on Earth will get so bad that people wont mind living on another world if it can provide them with a better life for themselves and their children. And that's why i believe that one-day Titan will be thriving colony with a population of millions if not billions. Earth however will continue to rot unfortunately. It's obvious that there is little anyone can do to save it from descending into ruin now. So we need to establish the new "America" (Meaning a new land in the distance that provides new opportunity and freedom from oppressive regimes.) in order to survive. Earth is currently consuming itself. And we don't want to all go down with it.

[Bill Phil]

46 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

The thing is though. Imagine it from the standpoint of a kid growing up. Let's assume your parents are reasonably wealthy. You grow up in a good sized house with plenty of luxuries. (This represents the Earth.) At first you make relatively little impact but in your teen years you start to trash the place with all your parties and other kinds of misbehavior. Eventually once you reach adulthood you might get kicked out of the house and forced to live on your own. Which means starting from scratch and building your own life. You move into a cheap apartment and make do with it while making subtle changes over time that build up to make a home.

This is similar to how i believe our expansion into space will go. Remember that the climate in Europe had everything that the Europeans could want. But the governments and living conditions were bad. So many of them left for America. Earth can technically provide everything we need. But as climate change makes it less habitable combined with the increasing scarcity of jobs and the millennia of ancient prejudices that we still cannot eliminate. Our life quality on Earth is declining. And even though theoretically it would be easy to fix, Our own ignorance blocks us. (Note how many people still deny climate change. Including the current US administration.) and eventually the quality of life on Earth will get so bad that people wont mind living on another world if it can provide them with a better life for themselves and their children. And that's why i believe that one-day Titan will be thriving colony with a population of millions if not billions. Earth however will continue to rot unfortunately. It's obvious that there is little anyone can do to save it from descending into ruin now. So we need to establish the new "America" (Meaning a new land in the distance that provides new opportunity and freedom from oppressive regimes.) in order to survive. Earth is currently consuming itself. And we don't want to all go down with it.

But Titan is a poor choice. As is Mars, Venus, the Moon, and more. The best option for living off of the Earth is in orbit. Any colony is going to be expensive and very difficult to build. We should build them close to home first, and then we can start going outwards. But Titan isn't suitable for colonization at all. Distance is an enormous factor. Not to mention that it's already costly to send something to LEO. It's going to be vastly more expensive to send something far smaller to Titan. And if anything goes wrong (think: Roanoke) there's no natives to turn to, although the jury is still out for that particular settlement... There'll be no help for years.

The colonization of the New World is a poor analogy to the colonization of space. All forms of colonization on Earth are, in fact. The best one is actually the island hopping of the Pacific Islands. It's not a good fit, even so...

Edited February 7, 2017 by Bill Phil

[daniel l.]

Just now, Bill Phil said:

But Titan is a poor choice. As is Mars, Venus, the Moon, and more. The best option for living off of the Earth is in orbit. Any colony is going to be expensive and very difficult to build. We should build them close to home first, and then we can start going outwards. But Titan isn't suitable for colonization at all. Distance is an enormous factor. Not to mention that it's already costly to send something to LEO. It's going to be vastly more expensive to send something far smaller to Titan. And if anything goes wrong (think: Roanoke) there's no natives to turn to, although the jury is still out for that particular settlement... There'll be no help for years.

We have made many advancements since then. The original colonists didn't have hydroponics. Nor did they have genetic engineering (Excluding selective breeding.). With enough starter materials to produce food indefinitely. Titan would be fully self sustaining. The ground itself is made of ice. Meaning that the supply of air, Water, And fuel, is essentially unlimited, And with it's nitrogen rich atmosphere, Titan would be quite capable of agriculture provided that the plants were grown within greenhouses. Think about how nuclear submarines can essentially sustain their crew's forever, It draws everything it needs from the water, Fuel, Air, Drinking Water, The only thing it can't replenish is food. And with the necessary materials it could do that too. No other planet/moon can do these things. Mars has practically no atmosphere at all. Callisto in airless. Ganymede and Europa are inside a deadly radiation belt, Venus is too hot and heavy, Mercury is airless and scorching, Etc. Titan has a nitrogen rich atmosphere, An abundance of resources, And enough pressure to reduce the difficulty of colony management (On mars if a Hab springs a leak then it is a life or death situation. On Titan it's like "Hey honey is it a little cold in here?" "Yeah it is, Must be a leak, I'll turn up the heater and we'll have a repairman over here next week.")

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, daniel l. said:

So we need to establish the new "America" (Meaning a new land in the distance that provides new opportunity and freedom from oppressive regimes.) in order to survive.

Except...  that's not how it happened.   Your analogy is horribly broken because you (like so many) fail to grasp that colonization wasn't about making a better life - it was about making money.  The Revolutionary War wasn't about fixing up a broken down apartment house - it was about appropriating a fairly nice apartment built up with someone else's money.  (Before you poodle, yes, I am American.  I'm just using your analogy.)
 

10 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

Think about how nuclear submarines can essentially sustain their crew's forever, It draws everything it needs from the water

On top of being an American, I'm also a former nuclear submariner - and the above is so incredibly off base I don't know where to begin.  We didn't draw food from the water.  Or consumables (such as the hydraulic filters that had to be replaced periodically).  Or spare parts to replace failed ones. Or fuel (either diesel for the backup generator or for the reactor itself).   We drew water and O2, and that's it.   Everything else came from the shore.

Titan is in the same boat - it may have abundant resources, but it doesn't have any manufacturing capacity.  (And manufacturing capacity is going to be hideously expensive to  build.  And don't mention 3d printing, because for the foreseeable future 3d printing is practically useless compared to the vast range of things the colony will need.)   And that's something else you don't seem to grasp, the American colonies were incredibly dependent on the Old World for any number of important things - not just capital, but materiel and personnel as well.  Even after Independence, that dependence continued.  (And continues to this day, America has never actually been self sufficient.)

Nobody but nobody has tried to set up a fully independent, fully self sufficient colony with anything above Stone Age technology in millennia - there's a reason for that.

[daniel l.]

5 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

We drew water and O2, and that's it.   Everything else came from the shore.

That's what i meant. Everything needed to sustain the Human population with the exception of food was provided.

14 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Titan is in the same boat - it may have abundant resources, but it doesn't have any manufacturing capacity.  (And manufacturing capacity is going to be hideously expensive to  build.  And don't mention 3d printing, because for the foreseeable future 3d printing is practically useless compared to the vast range of things the colony will need.)   And that's something else you don't seem to grasp, the American colonies were incredibly dependent on the Old World for any number of important things - not just capital, but materiel and personnel as well.  Even after Independence, that dependence continued.  (And continues to this day, America has never actually been self sufficient.)

Also i understand fully that Titan lacks the physical materials to produce many of the things we take for granted on Earth. However, For shelter the colonists could easily live in areas carved out of the ice like the Inuit, Water and Fuel and Air can be gained from the ice without requiring significant luxuries, And metal can be provided through importation of the material from neighboring rocky moons as well as eventually mined from the rock beneath the subsurface ocean. Also I never said America was founded for the people or to be fully self sufficient, Between the 17th and mid 20th centuries America was considered to be a place where you could go to get away from the junkheap that was the old world at the time. Where you could speak more freely and carve out your own plot of land instead of renting land from a member of the nobility.

I also understand that given current technology, It would be highly difficult to construct computers on Titan that would even compare to Terran computers, So Titanian computer technology might be comparable to what we had in the 80's but that would be quite tolerable as long as your not a hardcore gamer, You could still do most of the things you do now including use of the Internet (When a Titanian equivalent is established.) So yes. Titan will still value imports from Earth, But it seems to me that it has everything on it or in the immediate vicinity to make basic Human survival possible. And while the first few years would be tough, Once the infrastructure is going, It will all be uphill.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, daniel l. said:

you start to trash the place

And usually it's cheaper to wash the floor than to build a new house with a clean one. 

1 hour ago, daniel l. said:

You move into a cheap apartment

Mars and other planets are not "cheap apartment". They are not even a dumpster. They are much worse than any place ever met on the Earth.

1 hour ago, daniel l. said:

the climate in Europe had everything that the Europeans could want. But the governments and living conditions were bad. So many of them left for America.

Just because it was. If not - they would be shocked if anybody tells them they should cross the ocean to grow corn.
Any place on the Earth, including New World, at least has air, usually water and more or less soil and plants.  
Only Bear Grylls could feed upon concrete crumbs, usual humans need organics.

1 hour ago, daniel l. said:

Our life quality on Earth is declining

But it's much higher than ever in history, and it's much easier to repair it on the Earth than to re-achieve this anywhere outside it..

1 hour ago, daniel l. said:

So we need to establish the new "America"

Greenland colonies lasted for two centuries, as I can remember. Greenland is much easier to terraform than any celestial body.

48 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

But Titan is a poor choice. As is Mars, Venus, the Moon, and more. The best option for living off of the Earth is in orbit.

By the gravity reason it's the only option for long time living and growing additional humans until they invent sci-fi on-demand gravity.
Also we can calculate total surface are of all planets and significant moons in the Solar System and realize, that Earth and Venus are abnormally huge, and they are iirc ~80% of total solid area.

As Venus is a little hard to colonize in observed future, and the Earth population will keep growing much faster than anything at all can be terraformed, no demographical expansion is relevant.
All demographical problems will be solved on the Earth, long before any moon or planet will be colonized.
So, no planet is for an abundant human biomass utilization. They are of another purpose.

57 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

But Titan isn't suitable for colonization at all.

Only for demographic colonization - isn't, for particular purposes, with limited population - very is. 
Just the colony will be distributed between the orbit and the surface. Oil workers usually don't live on the oil platform, but they can live there for weeks or months. Also their families could visit their place living for weeks if allowed.
Absolutely the same - with Titan oil rig and its orbital townhouse.

57 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

Titan would be fully self sustaining. The ground itself is made of ice. Meaning that the supply of air, Water, And fuel, is essentially unlimited, And with it's nitrogen rich atmosphere, Titan would be quite capable of agriculture provided that the plants were grown within greenhouses.

And this is exactly so. Just the population will be much smaller than if it was colonized in America-style. Titan is more like just Alaska.

40 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

that colonization wasn't about making a better life - it was about making money

It was about making money to make the life better. :)))
Mostly because population had grown up while the area of soil - not.

1 hour ago, daniel l. said:

Titan lacks the physical materials to produce many of the things we take for granted on Earth

You are just not used to live in a plastic/carbon house with plastic/carbon furniture. Just a little change of habits, and the only thing Titan needs to import is metallurgy, and not that much and often.

A self-sustaining colony of nerds - that's what the Titan is to be.
The backup copy of humanity brain, unlike Mars.

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, daniel l. said:

Also I never said America was founded for the people or to be fully self sufficient

I didn't say you did.  I said you grossly and completely misunderstand the economics and economies of colonies and of nations.
 

1 hour ago, daniel l. said:

So Titanian computer technology might be comparable to what we had in the 80's but that would be quite tolerable as long as your not a hardcore gamer,

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I wouldn't consider the computer technology of the 0080's to be acceptable in any way.  Or, in other words, Titan doesn't have the resources to support even the basics of human survival without massive and ongoing support from Earth.  Ongoing support that won't be forthcoming because there's nothing on Titan worth the cost of exporting it to Earth.

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Titan doesn't have the resources to support even the basics of human survival without massive and ongoing support from Earth.

While metallurgy still uses chemistry, rather than physics.
Physics makes things more dumb and simple.

Edited February 7, 2017 by kerbiloid

[daniel l.]

2 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I wouldn't consider the computer technology of the 0080's to be acceptable in any way.  Or, in other words, Titan doesn't have the resources to support even the basics of human survival without massive and ongoing support from Earth.  Ongoing support that won't be forthcoming because there's nothing on Titan worth the cost of exporting it to Earth.

Do you call not having modern computers a basic need?

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

But it's much higher than ever in history, and it's much easier to repair it on the Earth than to re-achieve this anywhere outside it..

Yes. But it reached it's apogee in the developed world years ago. In order to improve it further you have to break a few old customs, And we all know idiots who would rather destroy the world than lose those customs.  With automation on the rise, Employment is becoming obsolete, And soon the majority of people will be unemployed. Poverty will increase and the middle class will disappear entirely. The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. It cannot be easily repaired because it's not just about material issues such as developing nations or territorial arguments, It's about opinions. I wont get deep into politics here but it's obvious that the world is currently in the grip of people who are largely uneducated and thus lack understanding of the problems or their solutions.

[kerbiloid]

That's exactly why humanity just has no time to colonize worlds before these problems get solved in near decades.

17 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

grip of people who are largely uneducated and thus lack understanding of the problems or their solutions

Is exactly what's Mars need.

Edited February 7, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Nibb31]

7 hours ago, daniel l. said:

I'm just making a point. How are you going to study things up close from far away? Even with the best telescopes it would be impossible to make out many details on an exoplanet. Even if you can get Google Earth level detail there still will be things you can't see.

There's nothing you can't study with a robot for orders of magnitude cheaper than sending humans. To study the cellular structure of grass, you send an miniature automated lab that is designed to study the cellular structure of things.

[daniel l.]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

That's exactly why humanity just has no time to colonize worlds before these problems get solved in near decades.

Is exactly what's Mars needing.

Well. The thing is that these problems are not going to get solved any time soon. After all. The horrible people who make all our lives miserable aren't just going to go away. And we can't exactly destroy them because that would be morally wrong and would make us no better than them. So it seems to me that the best option is to leave them behind and let them burn in their own fire.

[Nibb31]

1 minute ago, daniel l. said:

Well. The thing is that these problems are not going to get solved any time soon. After all. The horrible people who make all our lives miserable aren't just going to go away. And we can't exactly destroy them because that would be morally wrong and would make us no better than them. So it seems to me that the best option is to leave them behind and let them burn in their own fire.

Even those horrible people can't make the Earth more unhospitable than Mars or Titan.

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, daniel l. said:

Well. The thing is that these problems are not going to get solved any time soon. After all. The horrible people who make all our lives miserable aren't just going to go away. And we can't exactly destroy them because that would be morally wrong and would make us no better than them. So it seems to me that the best option is to leave them behind and let them burn in their own fire.

On Mars and Titan all these problems would stay the same. Just in a closed room.

Edited February 7, 2017 by kerbiloid