tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post2590275601927749864..comments2024-03-28T00:36:19.403-07:00Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Wars of the RingsRickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-56589304428424782632010-05-11T11:45:54.164-07:002010-05-11T11:45:54.164-07:00Citizen Joe said:
"I should point out to Fire...Citizen Joe said:<br />"I should point out to Firefly fans that the ship in that series uses two systems, a tilt rotor/jet and a larger nuclear primary thruster. The effects of the latter are shown during a full burn in atmosphere while evading Reavers."<br /><br />Something like an oil-tanker-sized FAE (fuel air explosive). Not something you'd want to happen anywhere near you...especially if it left radioactive residue. <br />It seems that a fission drive would be a good option for orbit-to-orbit spacecraft within the Saturn system. Maybe not the best option for interplanetary travel, but for zipping around the Rings, or between moons, more than adiquate.<br /><br />FerrellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-82766979692992007012010-05-11T07:06:28.226-07:002010-05-11T07:06:28.226-07:00I should point out to Firefly fans that the ship i...I should point out to Firefly fans that the ship in that series uses two systems, a tilt rotor/jet and a larger nuclear primary thruster. The effects of the latter are shown during a full burn in atmosphere while evading Reavers.Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-71447624464302633372010-05-11T05:45:18.564-07:002010-05-11T05:45:18.564-07:00My idea involves some sort of reusable rocket/tug ...My idea involves some sort of reusable rocket/tug whose job is to get orbital ships from "high port" to "orbital height" (beyond the drag line). At that point, the IP drives on the cargo vessel take over and the tug drops away into the Uranian atmosphere. The tugs would need multiple drive systems: A rotorlift in atmosphere and then probably a D-T thruster rocket. Remass would only be used during the ballistic phase where the tug is clear of anything that might be destroyed by the nuclear backwash. This is a little like the Shuttle stack with its boosters (the tug) tank and Orbital. Given some heaters, even the tank might be reusable by turning it into a balloon until recovered.<br /><br />Hmm... looking at the performance of the various rockets at Atomic Rockets, I'm thinking that a fission rocket might have better thrust to weight needed for a tug. Maybe something like the Pebble Bed NTR. Unfortunately, that means a high reliance on imported fission fuel (probably from Venus).Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-50277446675218853472010-05-10T23:45:56.744-07:002010-05-10T23:45:56.744-07:00Jim: "They do however have a bunch of neat te...Jim: "They do however have a bunch of neat tech for high altitude ballons that can be used for eg: surveilance & communication relays."<br /><br />I know this will sound like a "duh" moment, but why don't they use chemfuel rockets to boost these orbital capable airships into orbit? Yes, ion engines could get them up into the upper atmosphere, but what's to stop you from transitioning to standard rockets at the point where you need to be inserted into orbit? If this is a dumb idea, please let me know...<br /><br />FerrellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-13085253519570651062010-05-10T20:28:12.692-07:002010-05-10T20:28:12.692-07:00I see the same problem. I don't know the mathe...I see the same problem. I don't know the mathematical relationships involved, but it sounds really off the wall.<br /><br />Otherwise I'm quietly following this discussion!Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-39638627360803911322010-05-10T18:36:30.470-07:002010-05-10T18:36:30.470-07:00Joe: by balloon to orbit are you talking about thi...Joe: by balloon to orbit are you talking about <a href="http://www.jpaerospace.com/" rel="nofollow">this proposal</a>?<br /><br />I don't see how it can work. Unless I'm missing something the air drag will totally overwhelm the thrust from the ion drives they propose to use to accelerate the airship.<br /><br />They do however have a bunch of neat tech for high altitude ballons that can be used for eg: surveilance & communication relays.Jim Baergnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-69952874248682731482010-05-09T20:26:01.628-07:002010-05-09T20:26:01.628-07:00Well there's the balloon to orbit method. Giv...Well there's the balloon to orbit method. Given the 20 atmosphere pressure differential, a gradual ascent might not be such a bad idea. I'm gonna go with heated hydrogen lifting body. In fact, I'm going to stick a heated hydrogen dock at the coldest spot, the tropopause of Uranus. There the pressure is about 1/10th of an atmosphere. These would station in the calm bands around 25 degrees north and south latitude. Simple hydrogen tankage would be refined/liquefied here for remass. Primary lift is via the gas bag while axillary rotorlift can be kicked on during the docking procedure. Orbital craft could use aerobraking followed by lift craft capture and towed into port. Lifting body tankers, primarily prop driven would deposit their loads. Then the orbital craft would be boosted into space with a reusable rocket. The deep ports would be analogous to submarines while the high ports would be aircraft carriers.Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-67964227212544465702010-05-09T18:49:56.559-07:002010-05-09T18:49:56.559-07:00Joe: As Luke pointed out you don't get your po...Joe: As Luke pointed out you don't get your power by running heat engines off the temperature difference between the hot air balloon & the outside, but rather the hot air balloon is the low temperature heat dump for heat engines with the high temperatures coming from some sort of nuclear reaction.<br /><br />Something of the sort that could be done with current technology is use a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator" rel="nofollow">Pu238 RTG</a> & stirling engine to power a probe that floats in the atmosphere of a gas giant & the waste heat coming out the cool end of the stirling engine keeps the 'air' in a hot air balloon warm so it keeps the probe floating.<br /><br />This will be done long before the balloon cities because no one will go the balloon cities until we have a way to get from inside the atmosphere of a gas giant into orbit around the planet. The delta-V for that is way beyond current tech.Jim Baergnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-89425626800799733252010-05-09T16:35:16.572-07:002010-05-09T16:35:16.572-07:00Hmm... maybe a courier system with wing suits. Th...Hmm... maybe a courier system with wing suits. Then they glide in at the uplift ports to slow the descent. This could be that 'fast way' through the lift torus from the refinery core to the outer habitat ring. It takes a special kind of crazy to dive that deep into a gas giant. People gliding around like that only reinforce the idea. Living in 20 atmospheres of trimix or heliox ain't like Kansas, so it is important to point out the differences.Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-34306968619793786972010-05-09T14:22:04.443-07:002010-05-09T14:22:04.443-07:00Since the air is three times as dense (more or les...Since the air is three times as dense (more or less, I'm going to say 3 for ease of computation), and aerodynamic forces scale linearly with air density and quadratically with airspeed, the air speed of aerodynamic-limited mechanics will be reduced by a factor of the square root of 3, or about 1.7. Since terminal velocity for a skydiver in a spread-out posture is about 55 m/s on Earth, it would be about 32 m/s on the bubble city.<br /><br />People can already glide on earth, using parasails or wing suits. Wing suits usually require an auxiliary parachute for the landing. If a wing suit has a 2:1 lift to drag ratio (typical of modern wingsuits) the forward airspeed will be 16 m/s. An impact at these speeds will likely lead to injury. My guess is that you will need to reduce forward airspeed down to 10 m/s or less for a safe landing (and 10 m/s is still on the edge of safety), requiring a 3:1 or better lift to drag ratio. Just a note, the lift-to-drag ratio is also the tangent of the angle of descent - if you have a 3 to 1 lift to drag, you will go forward 3 meters for every meter you drop (and this is independent of weight - if you weigh more you will drop faster in a steady state glide, but you will not glide at a steeper angle).<br /><br />The range of bullets launched from firearms will decrease by a factor of three due to the increased density, due to aerodynamic effects (this does not account for dropping due to gravity). A .223 Remington bullet can go about 250 meters through sea level air before its kinetic energy is halved. In this bubble city, the distance to halve the kinetic energy will be about 83 m. Muzzle velocity will be unchanged.Lukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09617890536562434320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-7066034905100945682010-05-09T13:48:34.060-07:002010-05-09T13:48:34.060-07:00My choice for the D-D breeder reactor stems from i...My choice for the D-D breeder reactor stems from its availability (in that setting). There's a whole fleet of refinery ships that have multiple D-D breeders, so parts and supplies would be common place. The difference is that the city breeders are going more for the tritium than the He3. My hypothesis for the D-D reactors was that they were a failure as far as producing surplus energy (well not heat, they were very good at that). But the confinement field required almost all of the electricity that it could produce... Thus they were used primarily for breeding other fuels. In the case of the cloud city, heat production is fine and the service vehicles run with dirty D-T thrusters. So they would be mining both deuterium and helium-3, but also the nitrogen, sulfur, carbon and water for local use. <br /><br />The stirling engines turn heat into kinetic energy and as you stated, the heliox has a large thermal inertia. That means that fans, escalators, moving sidewalks, machinery, etc. could all have a consistent power supply from the thermal mass in the city rather than heavy batteries to store electricity inefficiently.<br /><br />I am actually very concerned with heat loss through the envelope, but I was presuming that the D-D reactors were producing far more waste heat than the stirlings would use up. So much in fact that once the stirlings did their job, there would still need to be waste heat ejection.<br /><br />Now, my D-D breeders require fairly regular replacements of their core shielding (Depleted silicon carbide shells, probably shipped in from Venus). So there would definitely be times when the city would operate on less than full capacity.<br /><br />The high pressures seem to insist on slower movements since running would feel like you're running into a stiff wind. Hmm... assuming a fall from a high point, what would terminal velocity be? Could people glide down from upper levels? What would be the effects of firearms in that kind of pressure? The reduced pressure differential would probably mean lower muzzle velocity. The air resistance may also slow it way down. End result might be an irate victim squealing like a mouse at the superheated slug burning his jacket.Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-48482323074074591912010-05-09T10:06:24.823-07:002010-05-09T10:06:24.823-07:00At 20 atmospheres of pressure, with pure heliox at...At 20 atmospheres of pressure, with pure heliox at 0.2 atm partial pressure oxygen, the density is nearly three times higher than air at sea level on earth. I'm guessing that this will not be too noticeable for just breathing. However, all aerodynamic forces will be increased by about 3 (drag from breezes or motion through the air, lift of wings). Because the air is more massive, you will need to beef up the air circulation parts of life support.<br /><br />The increase in speed of sound in heliox is well known, and consequent change in pitch of resonant cavities of enclosed air (such as flutes, didgeridoos, and human windpipes, but not violin strings, audio speakers, or drums, which are based on vibrations of non-air materials).<br /><br />Heliox has a significantly greater thermal conductivity than air. People and equipment will more rapidly lose heat to cooler air or gain heat from warmer air than on earth. Other transport properties will also have greater conductivities - helium diffuses faster, there will be a greater viscosity (diffusion of momentum), and so on. Oddly, diffusive transport properties like these (thermal conductivity, diffusion of atoms, viscosity) are not affected by the atmospheric pressure or density, until either the air is so dense that it is no longer approximately an ideal gas (which would be quite lethal) or so diffuse that the mean free path between atomic collisions is of the same order of scale as the length dimensions of the object from which the diffusion is occurring (which would also be quite lethal).<br /><br />Contrariwise, a given volume of heliox will have more than 13 times the heat capacity of an equivalent volume of sea level air. This gives the air a greater thermal inertia, so it will tend to maintain its temperature over longer periods of time.<br /><br />That's all that comes to mind right now, although no doubt there are other effects I'm not thinking of.<br /><br />As far as the cloud city design, why bother using heat engines between the lifting gas and the exterior? You've got a friggin' fusion power plant to heat the gas, just tap some of that for electricity. Further, running any sort of heat engine between the lifting gas and the outside transfers much more heat than work, so you will be losing heat faster than otherwise. The outside air and lifting gas will have an even higher thermal conductivity than heliox, so insulation is already a significant concern, no need to exacerbate the effect by intentionally dumping some of the heat outside. If you just tap the fusion plant for electricity, all of your waste heat goes into the lifting gas anyway, so you are not losing anything that way - all your electric needs don't take away from the heating effect (assuming the lifting envelope surrounds the city).<br /><br />And why run a D-D reactor for generating He3? You've got He3 all around you, you just need to enrich it. Perhaps use a gaseous diffusion cascade, or refrigerate the outside gas until the hydrogen condenses out, and then further until the He4 goes superfluid and you can let it creep away, leaving only the He3.Lukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09617890536562434320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-40117814478295466142010-05-08T15:51:19.787-07:002010-05-08T15:51:19.787-07:00I'm thinking now that the Bespin cloud city fr...I'm thinking now that the Bespin cloud city from Star Wars was a pretty good design. The pendulum below would act as a keel to keep it upright. The main lifting body might be a torus with industry at the core and residential outboard. People could then derive power with stirling engines synced between the warm lifting gas and the frigid exterior. Obviously they would need a reactor for heating everything, but what I noticed about my D-D breeder reactors is that they through off a ridiculous amount of heat for the amount of He3 they created.<br /><br />Yep, I'm really liking these cloud cities now. <br /><br />What are some of the physical effects of such high pressures? There was the hard breathing with the heavier inert gasses. But if you're just walking around in a heliox/trimix at 20 bar pressure, what is that like?Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-78722842564215594372010-05-08T10:05:15.110-07:002010-05-08T10:05:15.110-07:00"One additional possibility is adding sulphur..."One additional possibility is adding sulphur hexafluoride to the mix. SF_6 is much heavier than air at a given pressure, and can help offset some of the annoyances caused by helium"<br /><br />Probably not. My understanding is that *all* inert gasses produce narcosis like nitrogen & the greater the molecular weight the lower the pressure at which narcosis sets in. So at the 10+ Bar pressures you are talking about the mix better be mostly low molecular weight gasses like helium.Jim Baergnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-68654941165608399802010-05-08T07:08:44.137-07:002010-05-08T07:08:44.137-07:00For units, 100 kPa = 1 bar = 1 atmosphere. 1 MPa ...For units, 100 kPa = 1 bar = 1 atmosphere. 1 MPa = 10 bar = 10 atmospheres.<br /><br />Trimix or heliox is commonly used down to 10 atmospheres, and people have used it down to 30 atmospheres.<br /><br />One additional possibility is adding sulphur hexafluoride to the mix. SF_6 is much heavier than air at a given pressure, and can help offset some of the annoyances caused by helium, such as squeaky talking and a high heat capacity (causing people to cool off too quickly). It will, however, magnify the problem that as the air gets denser (as it will under high pressures) it becomes more work just to move that mass in and out of your lungs, so you will get tired just by breathing.<br /><br />At 100 kPa and 70 K, you get a lift of 0.3 kg/m^3. Thus, for a 100,000 ton city (100,000,000 kg) you will need 333,333,333 cubic meters of lifting gas. A spherical envelope 430 meters in radius (860 meters across) would do the trick.<br /><br />At 2 MPa, where you get 1.4 kg/m^3 of lift, you will need about 70,000,000 cubic meters of lifting gas, or a spherical envelope of about 260 meters radius.<br /><br />Your envelope can be slightly smaller if you are using separation exhaust gas depleted in helium.Lukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09617890536562434320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-86888423615882255242010-05-07T16:03:36.699-07:002010-05-07T16:03:36.699-07:00Well, if I'm translating this right... and it ...Well, if I'm translating this right... and it is entirely likely that I'm not since it is in many different units... it looks like people could take 16 atmospheres (about 16 bar) and get used to it by using Heliox or Trimix. That would bump ambient temperature up to 200K and stick the city around the ammonia clouds. That means they could pull nitrogen out of the ammonia for the mixture. I'm guessing that isn't at all comfortable, whether you get used to it or not.<br /><br />However, assuming a floating city the size of an air craft carrier (100 Ktons), how large and hot of an air envelope would be needed?Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-48253988044322931232010-05-07T13:10:19.908-07:002010-05-07T13:10:19.908-07:00Heliox will not stratify out into helium and oxyge...Heliox will not stratify out into helium and oxygen over reasonable distances in livable habitats. If you have mixing (life support circulation, slight differences in temperature, etc) the gas composition will be uniform. If you do not have mixing, the oxygen and helium will settle down into independent exponential falloffs, with a scale height of 8 km for oxygen and 64 km for helium at 300 K temperature and 9.8 m/s^2 "gravitational" acceleration. If your ceilings are 100 meters high and you start off with 90% He, 10% O_2 at ground level, then at the ceiling level you will have 9.9% O_2 and 90.1% He at the ceiling.<br /><br />You don't want to put the floating city at room temperatures - you couldn't float! However, as I noted above, as you descend your lifting capacity for a given volume increases until somewhere around 20 atmospheres. There will also be less heat loss due to the decreased temperature difference across the gas bag.<br /><br />The difference in lifting for a given volume at 1 atmosphere and 20 atmospheres is a factor of about 4 or 5. If you just have a large enough gas bag, you can overcome this.<br /><br />Regularly changing pressure, such as spending the day at high pressure and sleeping at low pressure, will be more problematic from a medical standpoint than just staying at the same pressure for long periods of time.Lukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09617890536562434320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-3156189933566984142010-05-07T12:32:29.683-07:002010-05-07T12:32:29.683-07:00I was positing the Uranus floating cities to provi...I was positing the Uranus floating cities to provide a natural gravity environment. But that same gravity could be crucial for distillation process. I had already intended for a Heliox mixture in microgee environments, but if there's gravity (either spin or natural) then the helium would stratify out of the oxygen causing a dangerous situation. <br /><br />Perhaps people could spend their day in the higher pressure mix, but then climb into decompression pods to sleep at night.<br /><br />Room temperature doesn't occur until like 80 atmospheres, so that isn't really the goal. One atmosphere is right above the methane clouds and two atmospheres is just below them. I guess I'm looking for that sweet spot of habitability and lift capability.Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-68517613700461664312010-05-07T10:50:40.718-07:002010-05-07T10:50:40.718-07:00If the air outside is 80% H-2 and 20% He at 100 kP...If the air outside is 80% H-2 and 20% He at 100 kPa and 70 K, then simply by heating outside air to 300 K and releasing it inside your lifting volume, you get a buoyancy offsetting 0.3 kg/m^3. Your lifting ability drops as you descend because the temperature difference decreases, but rises as you descend because the air gets thicker. Assuming dry adiabatic compression/expansion of the atmosphere, I find that you get a maximum of about 1.4 kg/m^3 at pressures of between 2 MPa and 5.8 MPa (173 K and 240 K, respectively) with the actual maximum of 1.55 kg/m^3 located at depths where the pressure is 3.7 MPa (209 K). <br /><br />Using helium instead of outside air as the lift gas will decrease your lift. If you use exhausted gas from a He-3 separation process which is relatively enriched in hydrogen (because first you separate out all the He before taking out the He-3), you will increase your lift.<br /><br />The people living on bubble cities will not be able to live on normal air at 2 MPa - the safe limit for breathing normal air is about 500 kPa before nitrogen narcosis sets in. Trimix can get you to at least 1 MPa, and healthy people have survived dives as deep as 3 MPa while breathing trimix. Of course, you will sound funny, and will also cool off faster, if you breathe trimix. You will also need decompression time if ascending from high pressures to someplace with more normal pressures.<br /><br />Alternately, you could have the habitable part of your floater cities inside a pressure vessel. The added weight of the pressure vessel may make this undesirable.<br /><br />If the reason for your gas giant floater city is to extract He-3 for fusion, then presumably you have practical fusion and can use a small percentage of the He-3 and D you extract to heat your gas bag.Lukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09617890536562434320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-72352901205539781692010-05-07T08:04:21.681-07:002010-05-07T08:04:21.681-07:00Hmm... it seems that Saturn, Uranus and Neptune ar...Hmm... it seems that Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all around 70K at 1 bar pressure altitude. Additionally, Saturn and Neptune have ridiculous wind speeds. <br /><br />So, cloud cities would probably just be on Venus and maybe Uranus (if you have a good heat source). Uranus cloud cities would probably be in higher pressure depth with heated helium as the lift gas. The lift balloon may actually double as the radiator.Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-16057051296731337082010-05-04T07:46:50.386-07:002010-05-04T07:46:50.386-07:00Although I had originally hypothesized about Uranu...Although I had originally hypothesized about Uranus cloud cities servicing the miners with most of the operations taking place on the moons, I'm looking at some of the issues with it. Specifically, at one atmosphere, the air outside is like 75 kelvin... On the plus side, there are calm belts analogous to our tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. <br /><br />Another drawback is that the air outside is already the lightest gasses so you'd need essentially heated helium balloons for lift. I only hope that whatever processing is going on there produces enough waste heat to counter the loss to cold atmosphere.Citizen Joenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-41420346386161685302010-05-02T17:53:01.847-07:002010-05-02T17:53:01.847-07:00Ok, Nitrogen, or Argon...Well, trade-offs exist in...Ok, Nitrogen, or Argon...Well, trade-offs exist in everything...I will, however, hold my opinion as to low G worlds and human health until we have a generation born on Luna or Mars...of course, you don't have to worry about radiation shielding on Titan, what with that thick atmosphere...Still, an inhabited Titan would dominate any Ring colonies through sheer proximity.<br /><br />FerrellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-49199082431303546782010-05-02T17:30:32.230-07:002010-05-02T17:30:32.230-07:00You wouldn't want vacuum between the layers, b...You wouldn't want vacuum between the layers, but some neutral gas. Nitrogen would do fine, and just requires scrubbing the methane out of atmospheric gas.<br /><br />A problem for long term human habitation on Titan, or any of the smaller bodies, is that they probably don't have enough surface gravity for human health. Spinning a space hab is pretty easy; spinning a surface base on a huge turntable is possible but a big hassle to do.<br /><br />Cloud cities in the atmospheres of Venus, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune do not have this problem. 'Surface' gravity (meaning the visible cloud layer) is near 1 g, though both Saturn and Neptune are a shade heavy footed.<br /><br />But getting to orbit is tough, especially from any of the gas giants.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-9866042586409459252010-05-02T07:27:57.585-07:002010-05-02T07:27:57.585-07:00Picky, aren't we? "Well, actually the ori...Picky, aren't we? "Well, actually the original topic was the rings, not Titan. :-)<br /><br />One other problem with colonizing Titan: The lower atmosphere is about 5 percent methane, so a leak either direction might produce an explosive mix. That's looking for more trouble."<br /><br />Hince the 'double-domed- design with the vacuum space inbetween the two...plus lots of leak/methane detectors both on the inter-dome space and in/on/around the inner dome...I never said it would be easy or without risk, but it could be done; living on the bottom of the ocean, Luna, a space hab, or inside a hollowed-out asteroid also involves risks, each differing (more or less) from each other. But your point does remind me that internal combustion engines would work on Titan; just have the caruator pull in the methane-laden air and have liquid oxygen in the 'fuel' tank... The main reason I mentioned Titan was that it would be easier to establish a Saturn-wide infrastructure on it's surface than to build a lot of space structures first, then colonized Titan. Anywhere that has water ice for rocks,rocket fuel for air, and a lesser excape velocity then Earth, would get my vote for the primary site for colonization when we do get around to going to Saturn. Anywhere is dangerous, whether it be Colorado, Alabama, or Titan; you just need to address<br />that area's unique threats and engineering needs...:)<br /><br />FerrellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7494544263897150929.post-41917502174851554202010-05-01T15:53:40.488-07:002010-05-01T15:53:40.488-07:00Well, actually the original topic was the rings, n...Well, actually the original topic was the rings, not Titan. :-)<br /><br />One other problem with colonizing Titan: The lower atmosphere is about 5 percent methane, so a leak either direction might produce an explosive mix. That's looking for more trouble.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16932015378213238346noreply@blogger.com