Saturn’s largest moon could suit human settlement – provided we can keep the lights on. Thankfully, Titan has several energy sources that might one day power a colony, an analysis shows.
For all its alien strangeness, Titan is remarkably Earth-like. A thick atmosphere protects its solid surface from damaging radiation and it is the only other place in the solar system with liquid on its surface. If humans were to one day live under the yellow haze of the moon’s skies, exploring its rolling dunes and ragged peaks or settling by the side of gently stirring hydrocarbon lakes, they would need energy to power their lives.
“I think long-term, after Mars, Titan’s probably the next most important place that people will have an extended presence,” says Ralph Lorenz, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.
To figure out how humans might be able to survive on the distant moon far in the future, Amanda Hendrix of the Planetary Science Institute and Yuk Yung at the California Institute of Technology analysed potential energy sources.
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