Space Colonization: part 4 Titan

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Now I’ve mentioned astral bodies relatively close to Earth, Mars, the Moon and Venus but now let’s go further afield. We’re going to Saturn’s ring system to discuss its most popular moon, Titan which is bigger than Mercury.

Titan has been in the news for a lot of reasons; what I think is the most interesting, is that it’s the only other object with active liquid on its surface. We know Titan has an atmosphere and a solid ground which only Earth and Venus have in our solar system. When sending Cassini and Huygens there we’d had high expectation but Titan kept its secret hidden within its thick smoky atmosphere. Cassini only showed us part way through the atmosphere but Huygens would see through the smog. For the first 80 miles, all it saw was haze but the landscape looked similar to Earth’s. Huygens landed on a stream bed showing rocks that were rounded. This showed us the rocks have been smoothed out in a stream at some point, before the probe was frozen solid.

Titan is a moon with dunes, mountains, volcanoes and methane/ethane lakes. The temperature is -179°c (-290°f) Okay let me stop baffling about this moon and more about colonizing it. The lakes of methane and ethane would centralise the colonisations close to the shore. The methane could be burned to create energy and water. Building underground is also another option which would help retain the warmth.

Titan has many methods where we could obtain energy; it has hundreds of more liquid hydrocarbons than all the oil and natural resources on Earth. Titan has wind in its atmosphere so we could even use renewable energy.

Titan’s atmosphere is the closest to Earths in our solar system. It’s thick so we wouldn’t have to worry about several types of radiation. This is also good because you wouldn’t need a pressurised space suit. It’s not all positive though, as it also contains hydrogen cyanide which is toxic. There’s also no oxygen so a simple oxygen mask for breathing and something to protect them from the cold, is all they'd need on the surface.

Just like some of the others mentioned gravity on Titan is weaker than Earth and even more so than Mars. They would need to prevent loss of bone and muscle density and weakened immune system. A great part of this is that a person could fly with wings attached to their arms or glide with a coat. This would make it easier to land or send off a shuttle.

Most places could be terraformed with the right resources and money but would it be worth it with Titan. Titan is full of resources, so warming the planet and making it more Earth like you’d lose the resource that the universe is short of.

Main disadvantages

Though Titan has the closest atmosphere to Earth, like our moon it’s a better stop off point rather than colonizing. Titan has a vast amount of resources which would be convenient to refuel for longer journeys. Its main two problems is distance, with our current technology it would range from three years to nearly seven years. Then there’s the extreme cold weather. With Titans distance being so far from the sun, it only receives around 1% as much sunlight as Earth.

Source
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/titan/overview/
https://www.space.com/28786-living-on-saturn-moons-titan-enceladus.html
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/forget-mars-lets-go-colonize-titan/