Until now, most researchers have considered the Moon or Mars as the ideal targets for the first step in colonizing our solar system. These destinations have the dual advantage of being close enough to Earth and presenting surface environments that are not entirely hostile to current technological capabilities. Among other possible destinations, Mercury is too close to the Sun, with extreme temperatures and other physical conditions that seem difficult to overcome. Venus is much closer, but its atmosphere is poisonous, extremely heavy, and scorching due to uncontrolled greenhouse effects.
However, even though the Moon and Mars may seem like relatively reasonable destinations, they also have fundamental problems. Neither of these planets is protected by a magnetic field or a significant atmosphere, which would force any future colonizers to live in underground shelters to protect themselves from deadly cosmic radiation. And just so you know, is there anyone among you who would want to go to a brand new world only to spend their life in an underground tunnel?
In fact, this is a problem for which no solution has been found, so much so that more than a few expert planetologists have recently begun to suggest that the ideal goal to attempt to build the first human colony is neither the Moon nor the Red Planet… but Titan, Saturn’s large moon!
The atmosphere of Titan shields the surface from cosmic radiation.
Without an atmosphere dense enough to protect their surface from solar radiation, especially galactic cosmic radiation, any colony would ideally have to be located underground.
You wouldn’t need a pressurized suit on Titan’s surface.
Most rocky planets and all other moons in the solar system have little more than traces of an atmosphere.
Even Mars’ atmosphere is little denser than a typical laboratory vacuum here on Earth.
Titan hosts the richest nitrogen atmosphere in the solar system.
Titan hosts the richest known nitrogen atmosphere, so colonists would only need to add oxygen, using the existing nitrogen as a buffer, to create breathable air.
Titan has rivers, lakes, and seas.
Titan is the only object in the solar system, apart from Earth, known to host significant amounts of surface liquids. In fact, it showcases seas, rivers, lakes, and even rain and glaciers, just like our world.
However, even though it’s not visible, there is an abundance of water!
At temperatures twice as cold as the coldest ever recorded on Earth, water on Titan’s surface will be permanently frozen and as hard as granite. However, even though there isn’t an internal salty ocean, there is still a lot of frozen water on the moon’s surface and locked in the rocks below.
The seas of Titan could provide polymers for construction.
With its practically infinite supply of liquid and solid hydrocarbons, Titan also has everything colonists would need to build a permanent shelter.
There is so much nitrogen in Titan’s atmosphere that we could use it as fertilizer just like we do here on Earth.
Although Titan is inhospitable in itself, it seems to contain everything needed to build a completely self-sufficient colony, which would be vital given its great distance from Earth (1.2 billion km).
Resources Nearby: The Saturnian system hosts 62 moons and multiple rings composed of billions of icy particles.
Although Titan represents almost all the mass orbiting Saturn and is by far the largest moon of the planet, the abundance of other bodies in the Saturnian system also presents significant economic and exploratory potential.
We Could Even Fly There.
By far the simplest and most economical way to explore Titan would be to simply put on a pair of wings and… fly! Due to its small size and low density, Titan has a surface gravity of only about 14% of that of Earth, which is slightly less than that of our Moon.
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Credits: Ron Miller, Mark A. Garlick / MarkGarlick.com ,Elon Musk/SpaceX/ Flickr
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00:00 Intro
2:28 Titan Briefing
3:20 The atmosphere of Titan
4:50 You wouldn’t need a pressurized suit on Titan’s surface.
5:43 Titan hosts the richest nitrogen atmosphere
6:40 Titan has rivers, lakes and seas
10:15 resources nearby
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#insanecuriosity #colonizemars #colonizetitan
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Can’t believe you skipped all the reasons we CANT 🤦🏻♂️
It’d be easier to terraform a post apocalyptic earth than any other planet / moon.
When the Sun grows 3 times its size, Europa will be nice to colonize. Of course as long as the radiation from Jupiter is not a problem.
Given that your video about colonizing the Solar system was in total ignorance of the NASA Ames / Stanford pace settlement studies of the '70s and had no mention of the Stanford Torus or anything of space habitats, we're not expecting much from this.
Anyone who talks about colonizing other bodies in space needs to prove that we can live long-term and stay healthy in low G. That's _proof_, not S.F., not wishes and hopes that the question goes away ad try it and see, not maybe i the future artificially engineering ourselves and our offspring.
Prove that first, and we can go on to talk about why space habitats are still the better or only option for off-Earth habitation, anywhere in the Solar system out into the Oort cloud.
No offense, but it would take ~6 years to get to the Titan using optimal transfer orbit, while ~6 month to get to Mars. During this period, the spacecraft should protect the astronauts from radiation and keep them alive in general. The amount of delta V from LEO is 7.3km/s vs 3.6km/s, i.e. much more fuel is needed (not 2x!).
Good content, but I reckon the ernest American style (child-oriented) overly enthusiastic narrative could be well replaced with something more serene. Nothing wrong with his voice per se, but slower and more methodical would do wonders for the scale and scope of the topic. Just a suggestion!
You do know the distance between mars and jupiter is vast right…..so the problems going from earth to mars would be magnified 10 fold. IE radiation and zero gravity. It take 7 years by rocket to get there……titan is 1.6 bars not 50% It also rotates slow, it takes 16 days to go one day. How you gonna grow plants…..Its gravity is also 1/7 the earths. earth is 9.8 meters a second titans is 1.35m/s. I dont think your thinking anything right. the gravity the time it takes to travel there the long days the atmosphere, if we had best case, and a based on mars it still take 6 years to get to titan. We have to have artificial gravity and already be mining the asteroid fields.
There are no advance lifeforms on Titan we Martians have been waiting for our children on earth to come and rescue us for millions of years
>that feel when you will never get to colonize titan
Really nice comments on the viability of colonizing Titan, but it is very strange that your main reason is the moon and Mars would expose people to radiation. The moon is 3 days away at 390K km. Mars is 7 months away at 500 million km. Titan is 1 billion km. Even thought Titan is twice as far as Mars, it take 6-7 years to get there.
There is no existing technology that would allow a human to travel to Mars without being killed by the radiation. Any living thing we know of would be a puddle of radiation by the time it got to Titan. Not much point in focusing on a place you can't get to alive.
Problem, titan is way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way further away.
Far too far away to it being very probable.
Mars is already VERY far away.
I love the fact that everyone is assuming that colonising space is actually worth doing. Think about that. There's lots of things that are possible but shouldn't actually be done, because they make no one better off. Yet, here we are. Should we colonise Venus? Or Mars? Or Titan? What if the answer is no to all of those?
Basic and fundamental question: Take a human being. How does that person benefit from living on Mars (or anywhere in space) long term? What's the upside? The rational self interest? How is any human being every better off from being a "colonist" in space than if he or she remained on Earth? And I'm not talking about visiting space (or Mars, or whatever). And I'm not talking about realistic manned exploration. And I'm not talking about temporary stays. I'm talking about actual, long term stays.
I challenge anyone to come up with a coherent answer to this question. Don't deflect onto "collective interest" or talk about tourism. Tell me what's in it for that hypothetical typical human being. What is there about a space colony that delivers some putative benefit that is unobtainable on Earth?
Yes, colonising the Moon, or Mars, or Titan is imaginable. It's not beyond the realms of foreseeable technology. So long as you want to pay a literally astronomical price. But is it worth doing? Strip away the childhood fantasy and confront the harsh reality. No one is better off being a "colonist". It is one of those things that are possible, but shouldn't be done.
I suspect there's only one planet or moon in the solar system we'll ever be able to colonise and that's Earth. While technically we "might" be able to succeed with the technology we have now or develop in the future, the cost and obstacles are just too large. It's hard enough to live in Antarctica without being resupplied constantly and the obstacles on Mars and Titan are magnitudes higher. For a start Titan is -180 deg C. That's because it doesn't get enough energy from the Sun. And that's the major issue because super insulation would not work. You would always be losing heat to the atmosphere and you would need a large, constant energy supply to replenish that lost heat.
What would happen if we hit Mars with Titan?
Blah-blah.Insane nonsense….click bait.
If people on Titan need to live in covered domes then they might as well do it on Mars. You could easily make domes on Mars to block radiation.
The destination is not the only thing that matters. It's also the distance and way to get there. First you have to get through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, then you need to avoid Jupiter itself and then manage to land on a planet that is surrounded by chunks of what not. And when you get there, you can forget about using solar panels since the Sun is now too far.
We will never colonize a planet. Period.
People think living on Mars means living in a tunnel system.. When in reality it would be similar to pretty much all in-door malls around the world. Also living on Titan is just bad, its too cold and at those temps it will make most metal to brittle. That said, Titan is full of Methane gas in liquid form. We can tank that Methane gas back to Mars and release it as a greenhouse gas to warm up Mars.
Don’t forget to take you f,ing EVs with you.
I wonder which place will sterilize the colonists first? Can you say deadly radiation?