Titan: A superior colony world compared to Mars.

[daniel l.]

12 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

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.

But think about the distance! If it's remote controlled then the signal delay caused by the distance could cause you to miss something that happened because you saw it too late. And Autonomy isn't quite functional yet, An autonomous robot could do many things yet still completely miss something interesting and you would never know. For all you know an alien spaceship flew right over it's head but it was too busy looking at rocks to care.

 

9 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

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

 

8 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

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

Not if your selective about who you send. And even then it's possible that the closed room scenario is what is necessary to fix the problem. Think back to the old sailing navies. The crew-members would get quite close and many prejudices would break down, For example: A white sailor is trying to fix the rigging in a storm, He slips and begins to fall when he is caught by a black sailor, The grateful sailor thanks his savior and later shares his grog rations with him, They become close friends and stay that way even after both are discharged from the navy. People nowadays have too much to take for granted, Why should a racist person talk to a person of that race? He has billions of other people to talk to instead, Why should he care? In a close confined situation such as a space colony, Like it or not, Your fellow colonists are all you have, They are your company, They are also your lifeline in an emergency, So be nice to them. Close confines bring people together and force them to interact, Soon enough all the racism and bias is washed away by reality. Life would improve.

Edited February 7, 2017 by daniel l.

[Nibb31]

On 2/7/2017 at 8:11 AM, daniel l. said:

But think about the distance! If it's remote controlled then the signal delay caused by the distance could cause you to miss something that happened because you saw it too late. And Autonomy isn't quite functional yet, An autonomous robot could do many things yet still completely miss something interesting and you would never know. For all you know an alien spaceship flew right over it's head but it was too busy looking at rocks to care.

Who cares if there is a delay? There is no "too late" for exogeology or even exobiology. It's not like those rocks are going anywhere. They will still be there in 1000 years, and it's much easier to send another automated experiment in 10 years than to send a hypothetical 10-percent-of-your-GDP manned expedition in 30 years (maybe).

"Missing something" is just a matter of sending the right sensors to the right places. There is no need for human presence. A human driving an RV over the Martian landscape at 50km/h is going to miss stuff too.

We are already monitoring Mars from orbit. The amount of sensors and instruments pointing at Mars increases on each mission. Believe me, if there were flying saucers on Mars, we would already know.

Quote

Not if your selective about who you send. And even then it's possible that the closed room scenario is what is necessary to fix the problem. Think back to the old sailing navies. The crew-members would get quite close and many prejudices would break down, For example: A white sailor is trying to fix the rigging in a storm, He slips and begins to fall when he is caught by a black sailor, The grateful sailor thanks his savior and later shares his grog rations with him, They become close friends and stay that way even after both are discharged from the navy. People nowadays have too much to take for granted, Why should a racist person talk to a person of that race? He has billions of other people to talk to instead, Why should he care? In a close confined situation such as a space colony, Like it or not, Your fellow colonists are all you have, They are your company, They are also your lifeline in an emergency, So be nice to them. Close confines bring people together and force them to interact, Soon enough all the racism and bias is washed away by reality. Life would improve.

I'm not sure where you're going with this, but none of those US-centric "great american frontier", the "old world colonization", or the "wild west" analogies apply to colonization of the solar system. 

Edited February 8, 2017 by Nibb31

[kerbiloid]

I'm afraid that the example with sailors is an example of individuals. Crowds deal another way, they don't care much about personal beliefs and sympathies. A sample are prisons, suburban gangs, etc.

Edited February 7, 2017 by kerbiloid

[daniel l.]

2 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

I'm not sure where you're going with this, but none of those US-centric "great american frontier", the "old world colonization", or the "wild west" analogies apply to colonization of the solar system. 

Actually i was using the royal navy as an example.

[YNM]

Titan :

- Hydrocarbon liquids instead of polar solvents

- Slightly less colder than liquid nitrogen

 

Superior, in keeping the remains intact.

[daniel l.]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

Titan :

- Hydrocarbon liquids instead of polar solvents

- Slightly less colder than liquid nitrogen

 

Superior, in keeping the remains intact.

Well that's one good use for it. Cryonics. If your pal dies just leave him outside in a designated graveyard area and one-day someone could thaw him out and revive him.

[YNM]

... Intact as long as you don't shatter it.

[daniel l.]

1 minute ago, YNM said:

... Intact as long as you don't shatter it.

Well you could bury them in the ice. Or drop them in a lake and leave them there.

[kerbiloid]

Genetic materials extraterrestrial backup storage.

[Shpaget]

On 2/7/2017 at 0:48 AM, 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.

But why built it on Titan and not in LEO? To build a humongous telescope on Titan, you first need to build even more humongous "telescope making machines" on Titan. Mirror polishing and growing lens crystals requires substantial infrastructure.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Shpaget said:

But why built it on Titan and not in LEO? To build a humongous telescope on Titan, you first need to build even more humongous "telescope making machines" on Titan. Mirror polishing and growing lens crystals requires substantial infrastructure.

Not really required to build them on Titan. Of course, advanced machinery should be sent from the Earth factories.
(Unless there will be 3d-super-printers with atomic accuracy).

But as currently bunches of telescopes on different continents can work synchronously on the same object, increasing the signal/noise selection, with several thousand kilometers base,
so tens-AUs distance between "eyes" can increase possibilities of the orbital telescopes.
Tens-AUs parallax should increase resolution and even give stereo vision of some objects.
It would be much easier to map the entire Solar System, get a list of all its rocks and comets.

So, it would be a total inventarization of the Solar System and its close environment, as well as an inventarization of all exoplanets which could be ever mentioned to study or even reach.

It's much easier to support themn when they are based near a stable object with a technical base.
And the base should provide as much resources as possible.
So, Titan, and, less, Triton, are such places.

And such colony looks much cheaper than even a single humanned interstellar expedition.

Edited February 8, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Hannu2]

5 hours ago, Shpaget said:

But why built it on Titan and not in LEO? To build a humongous telescope on Titan, you first need to build even more humongous "telescope making machines" on Titan. Mirror polishing and growing lens crystals requires substantial infrastructure.

Why is not correct question. There are no sane reasons to build space colonies. At beginning they are insanely expensive and they do no product anything. At some point they may become self sufficient and begin to grow and develop, but soon after that they demand independence and become competitors to their founders. Expansion is part of human's nature and we do it because we can. First to Moon and Mars and after that to all solid bodies in Solar system which are not exceptionally hostile (like Io on Jupiter's radiation belt or Venus with extreme atmospheric conditions). Maybe there will also be huge space stations on orbit of Sun or planets, but I suspect that humans want to live on solid ground under gravity. Maybe very rich and powerful people can live on earth, quite rich on other planets and larger moons and average people in space stations or on small asteroids in very distant future.

I do not believe that Titan is technically or economically better place for the first colony than Mars or Moon. Atmosphere is probably more bad thing than an advantage. Pressure is OK, but temperature is low and dense gas cools everything very effectively. Some of complex hydrocarbon compounds are probably very toxic to humans. They should have very good airlocks and suits to prevent exposure to atmospheric gases. Hydrocarbon atmosphere combined to breathing gases would also form severe fire and explosion risk around every manned building, craft or EVA suit.

[Aghanim]

Note: this is for far future, where humans already know how to live in space. I'm not sure whether this is a good idea for first time outer space colonization

I think that we should not colonize Titan, but we should colonize the whole Saturn system. Saturn is full of helium-3 good for fusion fuel, and water in ice form is very abundant, which is very useful. Titan atmosphere is also useful, with high methane that can be potentially transformed into useful organic compound such as plastics, and high concentration of nitrogen means that we can create air (22% oxygen 78% nitrogen) in space, which is useful to pressurize all of the spaceships. With Titan having low gravity, and ice are literally floating in space around Saturn, mining operations will only take a relatively small amount of delta V

It looks like a pretty ideal place for a space infrastructure, but unfortunately from my wikipedia search everything up there is ice, no metals unlike in the asteroid belt.... So it is probably a bad place to build spaceship shipyard there. Too bad though, I really want to live on Erebor Mons...

Edit: I think that any attempt to build infrastructure/make a self sustaining colony that can expand on Saturn system will have the difficulty of getting enough metals from within the system, so they probably need import it from the asteroid belt, which will have the associated delta V cost

Edited February 8, 2017 by Aghanim

[Bill Phil]

11 hours ago, Shpaget said:

But why built it on Titan and not in LEO? To build a humongous telescope on Titan, you first need to build even more humongous "telescope making machines" on Titan. Mirror polishing and growing lens crystals requires substantial infrastructure.

I didn't say to build it on Titan...

LEO isn't that great since Earth gets in the way. Sun-Earth Lagrange Points are excellent.

3 hours ago, Aghanim said:

Note: this is for far future, where humans already know how to live in space. I'm not sure whether this is a good idea for first time outer space colonization

I think that we should not colonize Titan, but we should colonize the whole Saturn system. Saturn is full of helium-3 good for fusion fuel, and water in ice form is very abundant, which is very useful. Titan atmosphere is also useful, with high methane that can be potentially transformed into useful organic compound such as plastics, and high concentration of nitrogen means that we can create air (22% oxygen 78% nitrogen) in space, which is useful to pressurize all of the spaceships. With Titan having low gravity, and ice are literally floating in space around Saturn, mining operations will only take a relatively small amount of delta V

It looks like a pretty ideal place for a space infrastructure, but unfortunately from my wikipedia search everything up there is ice, no metals unlike in the asteroid belt.... So it is probably a bad place to build spaceship shipyard there. Too bad though, I really want to live on Erebor Mons...

Edit: I think that any attempt to build infrastructure/make a self sustaining colony that can expand on Saturn system will have the difficulty of getting enough metals from within the system, so they probably need import it from the asteroid belt, which will have the associated delta V cost

You don't need metal. Carbon is excellent.