Tuesday, October 17, 2017

The case for Titan (which doesn't convince me)

At NPR, a planetary scientist writes about the advantages of colonising Titan rather than Mars (or the Moon.) 

But the one clear benefit - a thick atmosphere that means protection on the surface from space radiation, and no need for a pressure suit as such - seems to me to overly offset by the freezing atmosphere which keeps water ice frozen solid and makes lakes full of frozen methane.   (Also - it's a long, long trip.)

Until you have great constant thrust rocket engines, I just can't see the value of talking about colonisation of such a distant part of the solar system.

And, as I have argued many times before, if the Moon turns out to have enough ice near the poles or elsewhere, and you have to wear a space suit on either Mars or the Moon on the surface, you may as well live on the closer neighbour, especially if there are convenient lava tubes in which to build underground. 

Oddly, the one thing the Trump administration and I agree on is a desire for a Moon base.    But the wishes are like those we have seen made by Presidents over many decades since Apollo:  all rather pie in the sky unless Congress pays for it and NASA is given a clear direction that isn't about to be overturned by the next administration.  Slate had an article recently against the idea, and that is the first sign that it won't happen.  Not yet, anyway.

No comments: