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Space

The Dream of Sending a Submarine Through the Methane Seas of Saturn's Moon Titan (nytimes.com) 51

Posted by EditorDavid from the above-the-sixth-planet dept.
"Mars, Shmars; this voyager is looking forward to a submarine ride under the icebergs on Saturn's strange moon," says the New York Times, introducing a piece by cosmic affairs correspondent Dennis Overbye: What could be more exciting than flying a helicopter over the deserts of Mars? How about playing Captain Nemo on Saturn's large, foggy moon Titan — plumbing the depths of a methane ocean, dodging hydrocarbon icebergs and exploring an ancient, frigid shoreline of organic goo a billion miles from the sun? Those are the visions that danced through my head recently...diverted to the farther reaches of the solar system by the news that Kraken Mare, an ocean of methane on Titan, had recently been gauged for depth and probably went at least 1,000 feet down. That is as deep as nuclear submarines will admit to going. The news rekindled my dreams of what I think would be the most romantic of space missions: a voyage on, and ultimately even under, the oceans of Titan...

NASA recently announced that it would launch a drone called Dragonfly to the Saturnian moon in 2026. Proposals have also circulated for an orbiter, a floating probe that could splash down in a lake, even a robotic submarine. "The Titan submarine is still going," said Dr. Valerio Poggiali, research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, in an email — although it is unlikely to happen before Titan's next summer, around 2047. By then, he said, there will be more ambient light and the submarine conceivably could communicate on a direct line to Earth with no need of an orbiting radio relay.

Titan is the weirdest place in the solar system, in some regards, and also the world most like our own. Like Earth, it has a thick atmosphere of mostly nitrogen (the only moon that has much of an atmosphere at all), and like Earth, it has weather, rain, rivers and seas. But on this world, when it rains, it rains gasoline. Hydrocarbon material drifts down like snow and is shaped into dunes by nitrogen winds. Rivers have carved canyons through mountains of frozen soot, and layers of ice float on subsurface oceans of ammonia. The prevailing surface temperature is minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit. A chemical sludge that optimistic astronomers call "prebiotic" creeps along under an oppressive brown sky. Besides Earth, Titan is the only world in the universe that is known to harbor liquid on its surface — with everything that could imply.
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The Dream of Sending a Submarine Through the Methane Seas of Saturn's Moon Titan More

The Dream of Sending a Submarine Through the Methane Seas of Saturn's Moon Titan

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  • If you send a submarine to Titan, please send James Cameron with it. One way. Somebody needs to pay for Titanic and Celine Dion.

  • Ideally as a 4K stream in full color and sound.

    So can we please not drag this out forever? Travel time alone is already long enough.

    You know, instead of pointless international bickering and time-wasting cancer like Bitcoin and WeWork and octuple-camera iNorexia jewelry.

  • Kraken Mare (Score:3)

    by taylorius ( 221419 ) on Sunday February 28, 2021 @02:05PM (#61108896) Homepage

    "Kraken Mare" is an album title-in-waiting, if I ever saw one.

  • There is so much that is cool about Titan. And we'll get there eventually. But there are quite a few steps we should to take before sending a sub. Like, mapping the surface and finding a lake to send a sub to investigate.

  • Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey (Score:3)

    by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Sunday February 28, 2021 @02:23PM (#61108956)
    It is really, really, really cold there and it is really, really, really far away. I'm afraid the whole idea is rather far fetched.

    • Cold and far we understand and can deal with. Those are hard problems, not insurmountable.

      NASA does the hard problems. It's kind of their thing.

  • Send a Blimp instead (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dmay34 ( 6770232 ) on Sunday February 28, 2021 @02:26PM (#61108958)

    A sub and even a helicopter are the wrong choices for Titan. We should send a blimp. We could have it self inflate from liquid hydrogen. With the methane atmosphere, hydrogen gas isn't flammable. Then we could just float it above the surface and let ambient wind currents carry it around mapping the surface, and touching down on occasion to take a closer look at lakes and sediments.

    • The communication link takes so much power, that a helicopter makes more sense than a blimp because its more controllable. I think for Dragonfly its the same energy to send a JPEG as to fly for several minutes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

        Sure. So why use any of that energy on flight? Just float around.

        • With a helicopter you have a lot more maneuverability, so you can target especially interesting locations. For instance the delta of a methane river would be really cool to see.

          • You could deploy sails and navigate by swiveling the sails or rudder. It would be slow but doable.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dmay34 ( 6770232 )

              Or just let the winds blow the balloon around. It's less intentional but you would probably cover more distance and area because you would use a lot less energy and extend the life of the project.

      • Wait what? Is it communicating directly to Earth or to an orbiter? Handheld satellite phones on Earth don't use that much energy.

        • At least dragonfly is planning on DTE direct to earth. So little dish on the surface - long long way earth. They simply didn't have the budget for an orbiter. Its sad, but at least the last I was in contact with the project that was the plan. Maybe they are hoping for some other mission with an orbiter at the same time. There is a good write up at https://dragonfly.jhuapl.edu/N... [jhuapl.edu] that has a lot of the mission power systems. I very much wanted to get involved in helping improve the communications

    • That does sound like a good idea. Titan's atmosphere is thicker than Earth's and the gravity is lower, so the blimp won't have to be all that big. The main problems I see are navigation (avoiding mountains/hills), energy requirements and complexity/weight to inflate/deflate (unless you do a one time inflation and ditch the tank -- or produce hydrogen on-site maybe on the ground using that methane), things like that. Solar energy on Titan is minimal so even if you made the top of the blimp solar out of solar

    • A sub and even a helicopter are the wrong choices for Titan. We should send a blimp. We could have it self inflate from liquid hydrogen. With the methane atmosphere, hydrogen gas isn't flammable. Then we could just float it above the surface and let ambient wind currents carry it around mapping the surface, and touching down on occasion to take a closer look at lakes and sediments.

      I love the idea of a Titan airship

      https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/cita... [nasa.gov]

      https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/1... [aiaa.org]

      -but the quadcopter is a lot smaller.

  • It seems that the recent China space-activity boosted the NASA ambitions, cold war is back?

  • There is no place like Titan, not even Detroit of the 1950s: lakes of alkanes, shorelines of frozen petroleum, air thick with hydrocarbon distillates. NASA needs to characterize this unique non-ecosystem before colonists swarm in and, human nature being what it is, start cleaning up the air so they can supplement it with oxygen and muck everything up with trees and flowers.

  • Seas of Meth (Score:4, Funny)

    by dmslu ( 448188 ) on Sunday February 28, 2021 @07:07PM (#61109624)

    A sea of meth is not what this country needs

  • I can highly recommend some science fiction that has action under methane seas. First off, Ilium by Dan Simmons is a true classic, with fine references to the Homerian classic. A Darkling Sea, by Cambias, is also very good.

    Künsken's Quantum Magician also has those settings, but is not very good.

  • ... But on this world, when it rains, it rains gasoline.

    I am somewhat surprised, that no one has proposed yet, that we should bring Freedom and Democracy to Titan ASAP.

  • Just another attempt by Musk to repurpose his cave rescue submarines ...
  • Says JPL, while landing their 99th rover on Mars. Seriously. At this point, do they build those things Henry Ford style? Where is the innovation? Where is the daring?

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