Opportunities and possibilities on Titan?

www.welt.de as well as www.wissenschaft.de are reporting that a lake of Ethane and a few other hydrocarbons as well as nitrogen has been found.

Now it is thought that these liquids are flowing on the surface as well since valleys have been found that only can be carved by liquids.

So what about generating electricity there by liquids and by using rain?
Could this be a way to get ISRU-energy for rovers and other probes? Or to harvest the hydrocarbons for use as propellant?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Do you mean using a sort of Hydroelectric system? If it works on Earth, it should work on Titan, with the added benefit of superconducting cables.

If I get a say in it (and I will!) we will pump the excess Hydrocarbons into orbit (probably via Space Elevator) and use the Carbon and Hydrogen in it for construction and Terraformation, and also for making polymers.

Hello, Terraformer,

when I wrote the post I was thinking of a pendant to water power plants on Earth.

Regarding terraforming of Titan I can't imagine nothing else than local terraforming.

What ideas do you have?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Nothing more than getting rid of the Hydrocarbons and introducing 1/2 a bar of O2, topping the atmosphere up to 2 bars and increasing the temperature slightly, though not enough to drive off the atmosphere. The slight residual Hydrocarbons left should (hopefully) react, adding a slight bit of CO2 into the atmosphere. After that Titan would be a -150c ice world that people can breathe on.

Funding could be provided by selling the Hydrocarbons.