Saturn's moon Titan *begins* to give up soms secrets.. (cool pic)

[Heyo]

How's this for a hint at what's under that hydrocarbon haze? Are those dark areas seas of liquid methane? Hmmmm. Nobody knows.

:shrug:

Maybe the radar-altimiter data will help us know, when that comes in.

Heyo

[Ready4Change]

1. Beautiful pic. Very enticing.

Could the light and dark areas be seas and continents? Whitish areas polar caps of some sort? Could there be enough energy from solar or geothermic sources to support interesting chemical reactions?

Will we find out within our lifetimes?

[Heyo]

3. Well..

.... all of those are questions scientists are asking right now..

Yes, those MAY be seas of methane...

And as to the question of will we find out in our lifetime?

Quite possibly, since in December, Cassini will fly by again, this time releasing a probe which, three weeks later, will plunge into Titan's atmosphere and parachute to the surface taking measurements and pictures.

Chemisty there is very interesting, LOTS of organics, methane, ethane, propane, etc... it even rains hydrocarbons on Titan, it is though.

The probe should survive a couple hours on the surface if all goes well, but light levels are low so I dont know if we'll get a spectacular all-the-way-to-the-horizon shot like we get from Mars, the haze is just to think and the atmosphere is very dense. But the probe has a light on it and we should be able to see the ground in front of it.

The chemistry is interesting there, since hydrocarbons are liquid there due to the unfathomable cold, never getting above about -180 Celcius.

I am really looking forward to that probe landing.

Heyo

P.S. The probes name is Huygens :headbang:

[On the Road]

2. Is That Blue the Atmosphere?

That would be amazing.

[Heyo]

4. This is a false color picture..

.. from images taken in UV and infared wavelengths. To look at Titan with your naked eye, all you would see is a featureless orange ball, a result of the very thick shroud of haze that blankets the entire planet.

This flyby was an effort to use instruments to peer beneath that haze to catch a glimpse of the surface features.

The sky if you were standing on Titan would be a really thick orange fog, letting in very little sunlight, and very very cold.

Heyo

on edit: I didn't answer your Q, Yes that is the atmosphere, but it is not really blue.

[redqueen]

5. Nice

Thanks. :)

[gulfcoastliberal]

6. Very nice - we need to fund more robotic missions

and cut the waste of human spaceflight. Until we progress beyond chemical rockets, human spaceflight is a prestige thing that yields absolutely no new data. What has the Int'l station learned that the cosmonauts who lived in Mir for years hadn't already figured out. I say bring down the station, scrap the shuttles and spend all that money on more missions like this one. I hear they are making good progress on Ion propulsion engines by they will still never be enough to break gravity or get humans anywhere fast.

[Heyo]

7. I disagree...

... I will concede that it's not practical right now. But we NEED to work on a better form of propulsion or use the moon as a jump off point.

I really really want to see mankind on Mars in my lifetime.

You are right in the practical sense.. but you can't dicount mankind's need and drive to explore.. to "boldly go where no one has gone before"

(Or hell, go timidly.. just go!.. :dunce:)

:toast:

Heyo

on edit: And I think we should send a poet!

[gulfcoastliberal]

8. Where would we go? You mean permanent colonies?

Cause Mars isn't hopsitable for human life just like Venus. It might be easier to figure out how to reverse the runaway greenhouse effects on Venus rather than focus on a planet that is colder and further away.

I agree the moon could be used as a base, using chem rockets to get there. But that is a long way off. The Hubble replacement is a robot telescope that flies behind the moon to shade it. The science from something like that would be unprecented. Same with the Hyugens probe - no human could visit Titan for generations. Then there's the robot that's going to land on a comet, another on a large NEO. And if they crash, at least it's just money and science gone rather than some very bright people. That's what I'm talking about. Human missions burn so much cash and carry so much risk it really hurts by taking from what we could learn right now with robots. Those Mars rovers cost a tiny fraction of what it would take to get a small manned crew to Mars. Plus look at Mars Express and Polar Lander. Fuckups still happen, and more than likely these exploerers wouldn't make it.

I'm all for R&D to work on human spaceflight, but right now it is not helping us learn any new "legitimate" science. Ditch the spacestation and do more R&D on non-chemical rockets or lifting bodies. The space shuttle is the biggest debacle ever. They should've ditched ISS & the shuttle fleet after the Columbia tragedy. NASA management refused to acknowledge the deadly damage the engineers and even their own simulations told them had happened, they knew that shuttle was doomed and did nothing while it orbited the earth unaware of its destiny. This is a dysfunctional agency that needs a good cleaning out by President Kerry. Sean O Keefe is a big time BFEE lieutenant.

[Heyo]

10. I am definitely 100 percent all for robotic probes..

.. I think we should work on being able to launch them cheaply and easily and start firing them off all over the place.. planets, moons, etc.

But eventually we need to step foot on the Martian surface.

Colonies will be in the future, it's inevitable. The moon first and beyond.

I know that a lot of people think that just sending a few guys to Mars to poke around and live for a few months and send them right back is a waste, but I disagree. I think it will have priceless additional value, much of it in ways we cannot think of right now.

The sense of pride we might all share as a species. The great sense of accomplishment... and there really is a lot of science that robots CANNOT do. They do not think or feel, they cannot stand there and really ponder their surroundings, the way it really looks, feels.....

Like I said, yes we should send probes, but yes, I really believe sending humans to Mars will have vast positive ramifications that may not all be apparent until the mission is finished.

Safety is the main concern, the last thing we want to do is lose astronauts on the way to Mars, or worse, have them marooned.

But I think if the proper minds are put to the task, the proper resources are allocated, and enough redundant systems are built in to the scenario, the chances of success are quite high.

:toast:

Heyo

[Zuni]

9. Titan actually has a very thick atmosphere

it is the size of a small planet and has an atmosphere of earth like density.