Life & Temperatures on Titan

[Anders]

My main problem with living on Titan is the gravity. Humans really are adapted to 1 G, and living in a place with 1/7th the gravity... I foresee all sorts of unforeseen problems.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The big problem for a suit able to handle supercool temperatures is that the flexible polymers we generally use for things like joints aren't flexible at cryogenic temperatures (and there probably aren't any options that work over the entire range of temperatures needed); the actual insulation and heating requirements aren't all that dramatic.

It's TL10; I'm willing to posit a variety of advances in material science. (If nothing else, there should be more than enough computer power to brute-force through potential manufacturing paths.) Eg, having the suit made of clusters of atoms that gradually change in distributions between the inner and outer surfaces. Or some approach I'm not thinking of; any suggestions?

Originally Posted by Anders

My main problem with living on Titan is the gravity. Humans really are adapted to 1 G, and living in a place with 1/7th the gravity... I foresee all sorts of unforeseen problems.

I'm drawing on Transhuman Space a lot, given that it's one of the few reasonably-hard GURPS settings of close to the right TL. I've already posited something equivalent to the "calcium hack" used by THS's Duncanites. (Mostly because I'm already positing that Titan is populated, and I don't feel like forcing everyone to live in always-circling "gravity trains".)

I'm also positing that Luna has also been colonized, and so most of the solutions the Loonies came up with to deal with gravity got imported to Titan essentially wholesale. (I'm currently skimming through a pile of PDFs of '90's-era magazines from the "Moon Miners' Manifesto" with all sorts of such ideas; the most entertaining so far of which, if not the most practical, is building airlocks in the forms of shallow, U-shaped tunnels filled with mercury, kept liquid by weak heat-lamps.)

There are a few exceptions, such as Titan's atmosphere providing a terminal velocity. For a character in the classic sky-diving position, belly-down and limbs spread, their terminal velocity on Earth is around 120 mph; on Titan, I estimate it at around 37 mph. Which, according to Basic p430, implies a top falling damage of about 4d; or half that if falling into a lake or other soft surface. That's practically survivable even without a parachute or other protection, which has interesting implications for air travel.

Say, anyone have any thoughts on how small and light a parachute a typical human PC would be able to get away with, on Titan?

[dcarson]

Long term affects of low gravity are debatable. We have data points regular, 0 and 2.5 gravity. Turns out 2.5gs is good for chickens. The funding to co-fly a centrifuge with ISS has never been approved sadly.

[AlexanderHowl]

The problem with Titan is that the cryogenic nitrogen atmosphere actually makes it less habitable than Mars. Quite frankly, you would survive longer on Mars without protection than on Titan, as Titan's atmosphere will flash freeze an unprotected human body. Strangely enough, it is so rapid that ice forms an amorphous solid rather than a crystalline structure, so it is merely the expansion of ice that ruptures some of the cells rather that the tearing of all of the cells caused by ice crystals (brain scanning may actually be possible, as brain tissues have lots of fat, which would offer some protection).