Titanic Resources
Posted by Jacques Chester on Thursday, February 14, 2008
More about industrialising the solar system, this time based on work from the European Space Agency. The ESA have estimated that the oceans and dunes of hydrocarbons on Titan vastly outstrip Earth’s puny supply of fossil fuels.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not proposing that we mine it on Titan and burn it here. Instead I am pointing out that a cheap, plentiful source of hydrocarbons has been an important requirement for the colonisation and industrialisation of our own solar system. We can get minerals easily enough from the moon, but life depends on and is composed of hydrocarbons. The mapping of Titan shows where we can find an astonishingly large supply of feedstock for biomass.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 4:13 PM and filed under Geeky Musings, Science.
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Jc: Given your political leaning I’m surprised you report this.
How about “The mapping of Titan”, paid for out of the great (and forced) generosity of the American tax payer who give huge subsidizies to one of the great pinnacles of American (and indeed world) achievements, NASA — an organization doing research that often has no relevance to anyone likely to benefit directly from it within their lifetime, excluding out of intellectual curiosity.
Posted on 14-Feb-08 at 4:29 pm | Permalinkconrad;
In this case I have made the distinction between the virtue of the science, which is undeniable, and the virtue of it being publicly funded, which is debatable, but which I’m not debating here.
In any case, somebody will have to mine Titan to get those hydrocarbons to where they’re wanted, and I’ll take bets that it will be done for profit.
Posted on 14-Feb-08 at 5:38 pm | PermalinkSorry Jc, I was just teasing, but I certainly agree with you on the second (if we ever get there, that is!).
Posted on 14-Feb-08 at 6:46 pm | PermalinkNah, it’s OK. I got a similar bit of stick when I praised the 50th anniversary of Sputnik — from my own side of the political fence.
Posted on 14-Feb-08 at 6:49 pm | PermalinkA
Wtf. I have been lead to believe that our hydrocarbons like oil comes from dead dinosuars and organic matter and that ambiotic theory was crap. It isn’t?
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 1:21 am | PermalinkThere almost certainly is abiotic oil on Earth too, just not that we can extract economically with current technology.
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 6:12 am | PermalinkHow about something a bit closer to home - the abundance of He3 on the moon. The article notes that, due to the amount of energy it produces, its worth something like $3billion a ton, and there may be as much as one million tons on the moon.
All we need to do is set up a convict colony there and build a could of great big rail guns to toss the mined He3 down into Earth’s gravity well. Should be fine, as long as they don’t plan a rebellion with the aide of a self-aware computer…
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 8:28 am | Permalinkdr faustus — it presumes that fusion is a going concern. And if you’ve got an industrial base on the moon, that harsh mistress, you’re most of the way to orbital solar power anyway.
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 8:42 am | PermalinkJC, the hydrocarbons on Titan are very simple (mostly methane and ethane) relative to the hydrocarbons on earth due to them being formed from simple chemical reactions, whereas the vast majority of earth’s hydrocarbons (excluding natural gas) are complex because they come from the breakdown of even more complex living organisms (mostly plants).
That hydrocarbons can be generated from natural sources has been known for a long time and does not to support the pseudoscientific abiotic oilers.
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 9:41 am | PermalinkI wonder what solar energy fans would think of the ultimate commitment to making the most of our sun … the Dyson Sphere, which requires dismantling entire planets.
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 11:30 am | PermalinkWell, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Exterminate!
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 12:01 pm | PermalinkI was thinking more of Culture Orbitals…
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 3:07 pm | PermalinkProbably in order to terraform Mars as a commercial colonial enterprise.
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 6:07 pm | Permalinktigtog;
Mars will probably never be terraformed. Much cheaper to mass produce o’neill style colonies. Much more practical too: terraforming could take decades or centuries, would cost a bomb, only double available living space and doom people who are raised on Mars to stay there. Oh, and it’s at the bottom of a gravity well and is not very accessible from Earth compared to the moon or the asteroid belt.
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 6:32 pm | PermalinkWe go to Titan to construct a fantastically complex industrial site to extract hydrocarbons in order to ship them back to Mars or the Moon or artificial platforms - I suggest the Moon personally, it’d be cheaper - so we can use them as feedstock for biomass.
Hmm.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea, but it seems horrendously complicated and expensive. It might even turn out cheaper to work out a way to do it locally. Especially since I suspect whatever craft we have capable of hooning around the solar system will be quite busy indeed finding water for the people doing the colonisation/industrialisation.
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 11:22 pm | PermalinkThe again, Randall Munroe wants to solve our propulsion issues with lasers.
Posted on 15-Feb-08 at 11:42 pm | Permalinkgilmae;
Titan is one such source but is not the only one. But it’s the biggest so far the we could get at relatively easily.
As for water, that’s part of the point. Once you orbital colonies and orbital solar it becomes industrially trivial to extract oxygen from moonrock and regolith. But the moon has just about zero carbon, hydrogen or nitrogen. That’s why you need to look further afield. When you have methane and oxygen, you can create water in situ (amongst other things).
What is most likely is that asteroids will be mined for hydrocarbons first, with Titan perhaps coming later.
Compared to lifting water or oil out of Earth’s gravity well, crossing the solar system is actually cheaper in dollars and energy.
Posted on 16-Feb-08 at 11:38 am | PermalinkTrue. Mars will probably be exploited for what can be dug up from the regolith and rocks though. It might be more long-term efficient (on a centuries scale) to use terraforming with hydrocarbon mass addition to at least build up the atmosphere sufficiently that people working there only need pressure suits instead of full spacesuits.
Posted on 18-Feb-08 at 7:15 pm | PermalinkI was fine with exploited. With any luck it’d be by me.
Posted on 18-Feb-08 at 8:40 pm | Permalinktigtog;
It could go either way — it’ll come down to cost and ownership. I don’t think Mars will go past being a tourist destination. Anything worth mining is easier to get from the asteroid belt.
Still, it could be done, and Titan’s methane would make it a lot more doable.
Posted on 19-Feb-08 at 12:27 am | Permalink[...] Chester is thinking of solutions for the many problems humanity will face when moving off the Earth, though I have to admit [...]
Posted on 19-Feb-08 at 2:13 pm | Permalink[...] now mused out loud here at Troppo about orbital solar power and some of the astounding bounty of resources available in the solar system. Time for a bit more musing on some legal and economic aspects of [...]
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