Titan exploration

[bonzelite]

they gotta do a Titan-only mission. this just gets more fascinating. <br />i like your idea that the surface temp may vary widely. if that is some type of ejection into space from the surface, that'd be one incredible plume. it would make 2 blatantly active moons.

 

[centsworth_II]

<font color="yellow">"...it would make 2 blatantly active moons..."</font><br /><br />I think we can already consider Titan as active... even if it hasn't yet been caught in the act. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[rlb2]

<font color="orange">they gotta do a Titan-only mission. this just gets more fascinating.<font color="white"><br /><br />I can see in the near future when Cassini mission expires if they have enough fuel and can use Titans atmosphere for airobraking and Saturn for a gravity assist and / or break then we may get a extended mission with Cassini orbiting Titan. <br /><br />Imagine if we had a long exploratory mission soon focusing entirely on Titan instead of a quick occasional flyby. Don't know if this can be done but it is worth doing the math to see if they can do it.<br /> <br /><font color="orange">i like your idea that the surface temp may vary widely. if that is some type of ejection into space from the surface, that'd be one incredible plume. it would make 2 blatantly active moons.<font color="white"><br /><br />That was an earlier prediction; thus far they haven't found any large difference in the global temperature that would support that hypothesis. I'm still hopeful they will. A large cloud cover in one location in the southern hemisphere about the size of Australia may turn out to be a hotspot. At any rate they have now resigned themselves to propose that the hydrocarbons in the atmosphere are most probably from volcanic origins, from inside the planet. Boy that was a lively earlier debate, I was for volcanoes. At any rate just as some of us suggested there are no oceans of methane maybe lakes in some cold spots, so the accepted supply of methane from hydrocarbon oceans theories went out the window...<br /></font></font></font></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>

 

[rlb2]

<font color="orange">I think we can already consider Titan as active... even if it hasn't yet been caught in the act.<font color="white"><br /><br />True. Now that there are no Hydrocarbon oceans they are already re-adjusting there old theories of where all the methane is coming from...<br /> <br /></font></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>

 

[centsworth_II]

<font color="yellow">"Now that there are no Hydrocarbon oceans..."</font><br /><br />No oceans, but based on hygens' observations, river gorges, rain-washed ridges, and flood plains. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[bonzelite]

that is an interesting idea, to aerobrake at titan. i never thought about that, but seems highly doable. would they even remotely consider this seriously with cassini? <br /><br />with surface science, the cryogenic temperatures would seem to prohibit any rover(s) from lasting very long down there. they'd freeze to death in a matter of days unless they were literally heated constantly from some type of radioisotope decay heating units. they'd need to pump heated liquid, maybe, like blood, through the robot's extremities and joints to prevent freezing. and it would need penetrative radar sight to navigate in the murk. <br /><br />titan seems of all worlds ideal for aerial reconnaissance in cryogenically resilient balloons or blimps operating a few scores of meters above the surface. an armada of such instruments could be deployed and controlled by a central orbiting surveyor satellite.

 

[bonzelite]

as well, neat stuff posted at length about a gas giant/earth orbital relationship. so what is the grand summary? being that saturn could "float" on earth's oceans if it were possible, as that gas giant is not dense, would the earth attract saturn to it as a gas giant moon?! <br /><br />or would saturn's sheer size, despite it's lightness, become a giant gravity well, forcing the earth into orbit? <br /><br /><br /><br />

 

[CalliArcale]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>that is an interesting idea, to aerobrake at titan. i never thought about that, but seems highly doable. would they even remotely consider this seriously with cassini?<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />You mean landing Cassini itself on Titan? Probably not; I doubt Cassini would actually survive the experience. Or do you mean to put Cassini into Titan orbit? That might be doable. It would obviously limit Cassini's future usefulness for explorations of other Saturnian moons, so they'd have to be sure they'd gotten all they were going to get out of that.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>titan seems of all worlds ideal for aerial reconnaissance in cryogenically resilient balloons or blimps operating a few scores of meters above the surface. an armada of such instruments could be deployed and controlled by a central orbiting surveyor satellite.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />Wouldn't that be cool? <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> It might also be a good place for heavier-than-air UAVs; between the dense air and the low gravity, lift shouldn't be a big problem. As you say, the main problems will be power and heat. It's gonna have to be RTGs. I can't imagine anything else in the near future for such a mission. Nuclear power plants are too big, solar cells are too weak, and batteries too short lived. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[rlb2]

<font color="orange">titan seems of all worlds ideal for aerial reconnaissance in cryogenically resilient balloons or blimps operating a few scores of meters above the surface. an armada of such instruments could be deployed and controlled by a central orbiting surveyor satellite.<font color="white"> <br /><br />Here is part of a presentation I made at the 2003 Mars Society Conference in Eugene Oregon, The Martian / Titan Windsurfer, that addressed a new type of rover that creates its own power. The full paper can be viewed at:<br /><br />http://arrow-space-innovations.com/_wsn/page2.html<br /><br /><font color="orange">This would work especially well on Titan, even in a 3m/s wind, because of its thick cold dense atmosphere, about two to four times the density of Earth's. At 2 atm a 14 cu m, 3 m diameter if spherical, balloon on Titan would have about the same lifting force as a 4100 cu m, 20 m if spherical, balloon on Mars. Because solar cells wouldn't work on Titan, the movement of the rover wheels over its surface can generate electricity, like a bike generator does to a bicycle by the radial movement of the wheels over the surface. However, there will be a lot of times the rover will be in the air because of the weak gravitational field on Titan. In this case, for Titan, the rover can have much more mass to lifting ratio than would be needed on Mars. The dragchute can be smaller and pull a much heavier load. As shown in the test above, on Titan, the rover could weigh 5 times more than the resultant lifting force on it from the balloon, a similar ratio to our terrestrial test. If the dragchute was scaled to 6.2 m diameter, to compensate for the extra load it needs to pull, then it is conceivable to have a 14 cu m balloon pull a 100 Kg rover in a 5m/s wind on Titan with the help from the dragchute.<br /> <br />Two other methods may be employed on Titan to generate electricity. One of those methods is</font></font></font> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>

 

[silylene old]

The Soviet Vega 1 and Vega 2 missions put balloon-dangling probes into the Venusian atmosphere, where they drifted for weeks in the winds gathering meteorological and atmospheric information. It could be done on Titan too. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[rlb2]

Yes, I remember waiting for what seemed like eons for the news service to give details of that encounter.<br /><br />They also could use ULD's, superpressure balloons, on Titan re-enforced with Kevlar and scaled down quite a bit from what they would need here on Earth, they may last up to 300 days. Its a doable, doable, venture, and real cheap. They could carry probes or minature robots as ballast and drop them, using a tether line, into interesting sites. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> Ron Bennett </div>

 

[bonzelite]

calli, i refer to aerobraking to achieve low titan orbit. cassini would not be able to land anywhere, of course.<br /><br />and to the above posts about landers and probes. that is awesome. i think it may be inevitable. titan is too dynamic a world to leave sit there untapped. someone mentioned earlier that titan may be the remains of a gas giant planet. that is totally bind bending. but makes so much sense.