Life & Temperatures on Titan

[AlexanderHowl]

Yes, but that is Ice VI and not liquid water. Each ice below and above Ice VI is less dense than Ice VI, and liquid water is always less dense than the high pressure ices.

[DataPacRat]

Anyone have some good technobabble for non-^ TL10 cryovolcanic geoengineering? I'd like to have some political debate around the potential benefits and risks of a few plans, centred around the warm-water plume in the subsurface ocean under Titan's "Hotei Regio" area. (I'm positing that some changes in the plume led to changes in the weather, which turned some frozen paleolakes into actual (methane-ethane) lakes again.)

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, you could have a fusion reactor bore through the surface ice using thermal energy. If it is properly designed, it could float at the top of the mantle ocean and continue to release thermal energy. At that point, warm water erupts from the channel that it created much like lava and forms a volcano as the water freezes on the side.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Well, you could have a fusion reactor bore through the surface ice using thermal energy. If it is properly designed, it could float at the top of the mantle ocean and continue to release thermal energy. At that point, warm water erupts from the channel that it created much like lava and forms a volcano as the water freezes on the side.

It's certainly a feasible project; I'm just trying to figure out why it might be tried.

For instance, someone might suggest adding enough partial-pressure of oxygen to the atmosphere that people only need warmth-suits, not both those and air-tanks, which has some obvious benefits. Or some orbital solettas might focus some extra sunlight at a spot, and some light or dark dust might be spread to tweak the local albedo, in order to adjust evaporation and rainfall patterns. (I'll probably stat the latter program as Ultra-Tech's "weather control satellites", $1B at TL10.)

What use might an extra cryovolcano be for the colonists?


(After skimming the terraforming suggestions in Space p130, it looks like if an all-out effort is made to increase it's temperature, by increasing the overall blackbody temperature and tweaking the clouds' albedo and the atmosphere's greenhouse effect, then the temperature could be raised from -180 C all the way to... -140 C. Hardly seems worth the bother, unless they go for a full-scale Greenhouse atmosphere, in which case it looks like they'd end up with a temperature around 100 C, which would kind of melt all of Titan's surface.)

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by DataPacRat

For instance, someone might suggest adding enough partial-pressure of oxygen to the atmosphere that people only need warmth-suits, not both those and air-tanks, which has some obvious benefits.

Enough oxygen for that is enough for lightning to start some beautiful fires with Titan's methane clouds and lakes. It's also a hell of a lot of oxygen, since Titan's atmosphere is more massive than Earth's by about 20%.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Enough oxygen for that is enough for lightning to start some beautiful fires with Titan's methane clouds and lakes. It's also a hell of a lot of oxygen, since Titan's atmosphere is more massive than Earth's by about 20%.

Which are probably both reasons why nobody's started on it, for this setting's Titan. :)

(As an aside, given Saturn's orbital radius, and Titan's gravity, diameter, surface temperature and albedo, backporting the formulas in G:Space suggests Titan's atmospheric mass is around 1.0507 Earth's.)

[DataPacRat]

Anyone care to debate how many of the terrain types from pB224 could be found on generally-lifeless Titan?


I'm taking some rough notes on this setting's economy, and am throwing together some quick Mass Combat stats for the Titanian government's police and military forces. The latter's a bit thin; other than "every country has a flag and a military, so we should have one too" minimalism, the solar system is generally peaceful enough that the military's main goal is to be prepared for anti-terrorism work. (And to have a cadre in place to maintain institutional memory and build a larger force from, if large-scale politics change.)

For instance, I'm presuming that, for wide-scale support, there's a MILSAT network and at least one nuke-equipped "jet bomber" (just in case some big guns need to be brought out), and say a couple of nuclear-powered submarines in the subsurface ocean. For most of the rest of the force, I'm thinking that a high-tech, vaguely-socialist distaste for human casualties would lead in the direction of combat robots instead of too many biological troops; and leaning in the direction of making even small units as uber-capable as possible, to be able to apply reasonably delicate force against any would-be WMD-brewers without causing too much damage to a city-dome.

I'm currently thinking that a "standard anti-terrorism task force" might consist of:
1x Heavy Lift Aircraft (T9)
1x PE Fighter-Bomber
1x Heavy Truck (WT4, T2)
2x Battlesuits (WT2)
1x Light Truck (WT2, T1)
1x Combat Engineers (WT1)

The "Battlesuits" and "Engineers" (combat-bots) would be cranked to the max with roughly Airborne, All-Weather, Marine, Neutralize Artillery, Night, Sealed, Super-Soldier, Terrain Arctic; and Very Fine equipment, and Elite Troop Quality. The Trucks would be much the same, except swapping out Marine for Hovercraft (giving them Coastal mobility) and throwing in Neutralize Naval (which, given Titan's small, land-locked surface seas, seems to cover any needed waterborne operations, as well). With all the mods in the current draft, I've currently got a TS of 29,120 +(3600) Air (+(96,000) C3I from the sats), and a maintenance + logistics cost of $4M/month.

For Titan's population of 6.5M, I've currently got a police+military budget listed of $511M/month, with $93M of that going to maint and logistics for the milsats, nuke, and two subs. If I wanted to be silly, I could spend most of the rest on a hundred of the above fast-reaction teams, which is rather overkill for what few terrorists are likely to pop up (given that a basic squad of TL10 riflemen is only TS 640), and likely nowhere near enough against a more organized military threat. There's only around 35M people in the Solar System off of Earth, none of whom have any particular animus against each other; while if a major Earthly government took it into its head to stomp on one of the colonies, about the only thing those colonies could really do is hope another major Earthly government intervenes on their behalf.

I haven't started going through the Pyramid article mixing Spaceships with Mass Combat, but I'd like to have a better idea of what budget I've got left to work with when I do. Anyone care to offer advice on Titan's internally-facing military/peacekeeping/police forces?

[Anders]

Nukes? For anti-terrorist activities? It's a bit much, isn't it?

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Anders

Nukes? For anti-terrorist activities? It's a bit much, isn't it?

If the bad guys have just started spreading a particularly nasty biological or nanotech weapon, sterilizing a large area in a hurry could be an urgent priority. Remember, the higher the TL, the easier it is for ever-smaller groups to make ever-deadlier WMDs.

(Also, in Mass Combat terms, a "nuclear-armed" unit could represent one armed with military nano capable of eating a whole battlefield at once, in just a few minutes. Haven't decided which option to apply, yet.)

[AlexanderHowl]

Any society that uses nukes for anti-terrorism activities is going to not last long. Terrorists are civilian criminals, not military forces, and using nukes against civilians is by definition a war crime. Anyway, any military officer who used nukes against civilian targets, and any politician who was stupid enough to give them that authority, would find themselves executed when the inevitable revolution occurred.