Soaring on Titan!

During the last few months, several threads have discussed soaring
possibilities on Mars, but what about Titan? The NASA probe Cassini,
launched in 1997 will arrive in Saturn's orbit this summer, and will send a
probe to land on Titan in January 2005.

Titan is Saturn's largest moon. It is a fraction of the size of Earth, but
has an atmosphere almost 4 times denser, and several times higher. Like
Earth, Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, and its surface may have
oceans and continents. The weather on Titan is very active, possibly
including thunderstorms with lighting and rain. Yes, it's cold. Very
old. -190 F., perhaps. The oceans are of methane, as would be the rain.
The world would certainly be unfriendly to humans. ....BUT, ignore all
that!

The facts: less gravity, and more atmosphere.
The guesses: weather convection and a diverse lunar surface.
The question: good soaring, or bad?

Chris Fleming, 'L9'

"C.Fleming" wrote in message
...
During the last few months, several threads have discussed soaring
possibilities on Mars, but what about Titan? The NASA probe Cassini,
launched in 1997 will arrive in Saturn's orbit this summer, and will send
a
probe to land on Titan in January 2005.

Titan is Saturn's largest moon. It is a fraction of the size of Earth,
but
has an atmosphere almost 4 times denser, and several times higher. Like
Earth, Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, and its surface may have
oceans and continents. The weather on Titan is very active, possibly
including thunderstorms with lighting and rain. Yes, it's cold. Very
old. -190 F., perhaps. The oceans are of methane, as would be the rain.
The world would certainly be unfriendly to humans. ....BUT, ignore all
that!

The facts: less gravity, and more atmosphere.
The guesses: weather convection and a diverse lunar surface.
The question: good soaring, or bad?

Chris Fleming, 'L9'

Titan is too far from the sun and the atmosphere is too overcast for solar
powered thermals. But, there are other ways to heat the surface such as
vulcanizm or tidal bending of Titans crust by Saturn's gravity. All you
need is a steep lapse rate. On the plus side, seeing Saturn looming huge in
the sky would be a treat.

The interesting thing about Mars is that, should it prove possible to
terraform it to an atmosphere of 1013 mb, the new atmosphere would not be
squeezed close to the surface like Earth's because of the 1/3rd gravity.
The top of the planetary boundary layer might be three times the height of
Earth's. Think thermals ten miles tall. I haven't read any speculation
about the probable atmospheric science characteristics of a terraformed
Mars. It might be a pretty violent atmosphere.

Soaring has figured in several Science Fiction plots as a way to get
characters around an energy deficient planet. An acquaintance of mine who
is a SF fan was astonished to find that soaring really exists on Earth much
as it was portrayed in his favorite stories.

Bill Daniels

Bill Daniels wrote:

An acquaintance of mine who
is a SF fan was astonished to find that soaring really exists on Earth much
as it was portrayed in his favorite stories.

Hei! I would like to read those! Would you be able to enlighten us as
to where one could find them?

Christian 8-)O

On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 08:39:01 +0100, Christian Husvik
wrote:

Bill Daniels wrote:

An acquaintance of mine who
is a SF fan was astonished to find that soaring really exists on Earth much
as it was portrayed in his favorite stories.

Hei! I would like to read those! Would you be able to enlighten us as
to where one could find them?

Sam Delaney wrote a story about cloud sculpting called, IIRC, "The
Cloud Sculptors of Coral 9".

Can't think of any others offhand.

--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

"Christian Husvik" wrote in message
...
Bill Daniels wrote:

An acquaintance of mine who
is a SF fan was astonished to find that soaring really exists on Earth
much
as it was portrayed in his favorite stories.

Hei! I would like to read those! Would you be able to enlighten us as
to where one could find them?

Christian 8-)O

I used to be a big SciFi fan but now science fact seems more entertaining -
plenty of real mysteries to think about.
It seemed like once space exploration got underway for real, science fiction
writers turned to fantasy since their stories were less likely to be trumped
by tomorrows science headlines. In other words, I don't know the names of
the books.

Bill Daniels

Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 08:39:01 +0100, Christian Husvik
wrote:


Bill Daniels wrote:


An acquaintance of mine who
is a SF fan was astonished to find that soaring really exists on Earth much
as it was portrayed in his favorite stories.

Hei! I would like to read those! Would you be able to enlighten us as
to where one could find them?


Sam Delaney wrote a story about cloud sculpting called, IIRC, "The
Cloud Sculptors of Coral 9".

Hmm, can't find him at Amazon. When googling for the phrase "Cloud
Sculpors", I found this:
http://www.paganlibrary.com/music_po..._sculptors.php

Well, I also found this:
http://www.stealthpress.com/store/authors/roger_zelazny_(editor)/index.asp
And it seems a "J. G. Ballard" wrote a called "The Cloud Sculptors of
Coral D". I'll see if I can find something at Amazon.

Christian 8-)




Can't think of any others offhand.

--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

On Tue, 3 Feb 2004 06:42:13 -0700, "Bill Daniels"
wrote:


I used to be a big SciFi fan but now science fact seems more entertaining -
plenty of real mysteries to think about.
It seemed like once space exploration got underway for real, science fiction
writers turned to fantasy since their stories were less likely to be trumped
by tomorrows science headlines. In other words, I don't know the names of
the books.

Bill Daniels

Avoid the large chain bookstores at least in Aus and NZ.

There are some new SF writers you might like.

Greg Benford
Mike Flynn
John Cramer
If you like military SF, John Ringo

On a non SF note I think at least having an official policy of return
to the moon and on to Mars beats not having one.

We'll see. Lots of fascinating stuff to come.

Mike Borgelt

"Mike Borgelt" wrote...
On a non SF note I think at least having an official policy of return
to the moon and on to Mars beats not having one.

Yes, but you won't have to pay for it.

They have that nice shiny space station, if they were serious (rather than
just trying to win an election), I should think it a lot more sensible to
put together a Mars expedition there, and skip the moon altogether...

Marc

"Marc Ramsey" wrote in message
...
"Mike Borgelt" wrote...
On a non SF note I think at least having an official policy of return
to the moon and on to Mars beats not having one.

Yes, but you won't have to pay for it.

They have that nice shiny space station, if they were serious (rather than
just trying to win an election), I should think it a lot more sensible to
put together a Mars expedition there, and skip the moon altogether...

Marc


I would disagree. The moon has real advantages over the ISS.

First, there is lots of real estate for manufacturing a mars mission and you
can work under 1/5th G which appears much easier than 0 G. Like the ISS,
there is lots of cheap vacuum - building and testing spacecraft components
takes lots of expensive vacuum chambers here on earth. There is lots of
soar energy with Lunar days 336 hours long and no atmosphere to dilute the
sunlight.

Most space qualified metals are "Vacuum melt" alloys that could be smelted
from Lunar materials. There is very likely water ice in the polar regions
from which rocket fuel and life support consumables can be made.
Subsurface "storm cellars" could shelter crews from Solar storms. Finally,
launching an interplanetary mission for the bottom of a 1/5th G gravity well
is a lot more practical than from Earth's 1 G well.

There would likely be little objection to nuclear reactors on the Moon since
it is pretty radioactive environment anyway. (It lies only 93 million space
miles away from the unshielded core of a thermonuclear reactor, i.e. the
Sun) Nuclear rockets (Google: "Project NERVA" or "Nuclear-Electric drive")
make manned Solar System exploration much more realistic.

I wish we had gone for the Moon base instead of the ISS.

Bill Daniels

An acquaintance of mine who
is a SF fan was astonished to find that soaring really exists on Earth
much
as it was portrayed in his favorite stories.

Hei! I would like to read those! Would you be able to enlighten us as
to where one could find them?

Years ago I red a Ben Bova story of a rotating hollow cylindrical spaceship
with hang gliding near the center. "They can stay up all day due to the
reduced gravity." So much for the science in that fiction.
I do have a book called "Free Flight" by Douglas Terman. It's a post World War
3 adventure with the hero flying away from the Russian invaders in his SLMG.

Steve