[neocone]

Titan... largest moon of Saturn.

Makes Alberta look like Aruba, 14 years round trip...

But its seas of hydrocarbon are 100s of times the oil the Earth has....

[Precipice]

Hmmm....that *might* be a viable solution sometime in the next 500-1000 years or so. But in the short term we should probably look for solutions closer to home.....

[Windmills]

I wonder if that would be a more viable colonial outpost (trillion dollar taxpayer funded camping trip) than Mars. Having a fuel supply at your feet seems quite a bit better than shipping it across the solar system.

How's the space weather near Saturn these days?

[Revi]

Has Halliburton heard of it? Is there anyone to have a war with there? We could take it on after Iran maybe...

[Daniel_Plainview]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('neocone', 'T')itan's seas of hydrocarbon are 100s of times the oil the Earth has....

[oxj]

Would this support the abiotic model?

[oxj]

Fascinating...
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/05 ... and-dunes/

[3aidlillahi]

So what? There's three to fives times as much water in magma than in all of the oceans, rivers, lakes, and in the ground combined. There's nearly 10 times as much gold in the oceans than what humans have dug up since gold-mining began. Completely pointless. Great academic exercise but bears absolutely nothing beneficial to the general public (in terms of oil, gold, or water).

[catbox]

This would make a great movie!


cb

[Precipice]

I'm thinking that you would need some pretty big transport ships to make it even remotely economical to do something like this. Might we be able to take existing oil tankers and attach booster rockets to them???

How much energy would it take to get a large transport ship to titan compared to the amount of energy stored in all the Titanian hydrocarbons it could carry per trip? Fourteen years is along time to get oil to the market too....

[Cog]

One of the difficulties of space travel has always been lifting out of the earth's gravity well. You need a considerable amount of thrust just to get out of earth orbit. The larger your payload, the larger your thrust component. Even if we could build rockets that would lift a supertanker size cargo vessel to orbit, you still have to have enough propellant for a low energy trip to Titan.

Once you get there, its not like you can lower a 100 mile pipe into Titan's atmosphere and suck up the ethane and methane into your cargo hold. Trying to land on Titan would take even more of your fuel. So would taking off again. That is if you could even land a spacecraft on a moon that has a temperature of -290 F and an atmospheric pressure that is equivalent to the bottom of a swimming pool..

The return back to earth and subsequent landing of your supertanker would require yet more fuel.

[startswithearthquakes]

Just drag that biznitch back and replace our current moon with that one ...

[Precipice]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('startswithearthquakes', 'J')ust drag that biznitch back and replace our current moon with that one ...

[eastbay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Precipice', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('startswithearthquakes', 'J')ust drag that biznitch back and replace our current moon with that one ...

[mos6507]

I know this is a joke, but it's worth thinking about.

People deny climate change even though we are burning through cubic miles of oil that have taken millions of years to sequester in a form that was nicely out of our hair, thrusting it back into the environment where it can not be reabsorbed fast enough, and turning the atmosphere back to a state close to when the oil was formed, before higher life existed on land.

So that's bad enough. Now let's say we could pull Titan right next to us and transfer its atmosphere over to earth so we could burn it. If you didn't think the earth's climate could get messed up before, I don't see how burning the entire atmosphere of another planet wouldn't destroy the earth in the process.

Really, we should only be mining other moons and planets for He3 and other rare and valuable elements.

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'H')as Halliburton heard of it? Is there anyone to have a war with there? We could take it on after Iran maybe...

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'R')eally, we should only be mining other moons and planets for He3 and other rare and valuable elements.

[eastbay]

Ok, how about we lay a pipeline from Earth to Titan. I realize the orbit's of Titan and Earth could pose a technical challenge. However, we all know TECHNOLOGY and the MARKET can solve any problem.


So I suggest we look into a heat- resistant pipeline with 186 million miles of 'wiggle' room to account for the back and forth movement of the Earth through its orbit. Hey, when the price of oil gets high enough, this could be a viable option.


Just like cold fusion, which is only 20 years away (again).

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'O')k, how about we lay a pipeline from Earth to Titan. I realize the orbit's of Titan and Earth could pose a technical challenge. However, we all know TECHNOLOGY and the MARKET can solve any problem.

So I suggest we look into a heat- resistant pipeline with 186 million miles of 'wiggle' room to account for the back and forth movement of the Earth through its orbit. Hey, when the price of oil gets high enough, this could be a viable option.

Just like cold fusion, which is only 20 years away (again).

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Precipice', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('startswithearthquakes', 'J')ust drag that biznitch back and replace our current moon with that one ...