What will Cassini see on Titan?

The surface of Titan is near the methane triple point IIRC, so if liquid methane appears, it will soon either boil or freeze; there do seem to be liqud-formed features in the images seen so far, but they could be formed by a liquid which is rapidly freezing or boiling (or both together).

As for a rover design:
I think this sort of terrain and atmosphere is crying out for a vaporising engine, coupled with a hovercraft like skirt arrangement;
heat the local ices untill they boil, and use the expansion to drive a piston engime which powers a hovercraft; in the dense atmosphere a hovercraft might work welll.

 

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eburacum45,

How the hell do you plan to power such a thing???

 

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Perhaps we could burn oxygen...
Methane steam punk rules....

 

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how long do you think a oxygen supply will last? With the inflatable-wheeled rover you can float like a balloon, drive over rough terrain, even tread across liquids with ease, for several years on a few watts from a RTG or STG.

 

Looks like a children's trike. Yes, that would be good for a lightweight robot package, but when people get there they will probably use hovercraft; as the atmosphere is windy some kind of kitesurfing get-up would be entertaining as well, bearing in mind any waves will be large and slow due to the low gravity;
kite surfing on Lake Si-Si would be entertainingly dangerous.

 

There is plenty of oxygen up there, of course; what is missing is energy to split it off from water ice.

This could eventually be obtained from fusion, or by extracting magnetic energy from Saturn itself. Titan could eventually be self supporting, especially if it imports energy from the Saturn system as a whole.

 

people on titan, that won't be for a very very long time, if ever.

 

I've put it 200 years into the future on this page (near the bottom)
http://www.eburacum45.5u.com/moons_in_the_solar_system.html

 

I put it at never, at least not any humans of flesh and blood will colonies titan.

 

It may be outmoded, but Arthur C. Clarke's novel Imperial Earth gives an interesting view of a future human presence on Titan.

 

Well they still don't know what is down there.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/titana/index.cfm

 

Those streak features the Cassini cameras are picking up could be the key to it all. If they are produced simply by wind effects, that would make Titan a new class of planetary body: one with a solid surface shaped largely by atmosperic forces. Perhaps it ought to be renamed Zephyrus...

 

"Perhaps it ought to be renamed Zephyrus... " If there do turn out to be liquid oceans, it follows that the solid surface would be mapped as continents. That would be a fine name for the first or largest one mapped.

 

Good idea; I'm not sure that name isn't already taken in an astronomical context, however. In labelling surface features on bodies throughout the Solar System, scientists have near enough exhausted the various mythological lexicons from around the World.

 

Yeah, I've just finally taken the time to get to nasa.gov and study the findings Galileo made regarding Europa...and oh my goodness, what finds! There is proven sulfuric acid, and lots of it. You don't find much here on Earth, but apparently Europa has massive quanties. Also, a liquid ocean beneath it's icy surface is very probable now. Now, as for that picture of Titan...wowee, it's beautiful!

 

Only a day or so to go now before the Huygens lander is launched toward Titan. Does anyone else feel the malfunctional legacy of Beagle 2 gnawing at their expectations..?

That said, Huygens is not entirely British by manufacture - so maybe we can reasonably hope it will succeed.

 

Cheap shot. Much like Beagle2.

 

Assuming it does return actual images from the surface of Titan, they will cause a sensation in popular science circles - and be the subject of thousands of papers, books, online articles, TV features etc. Yet how can we judge the geology or meterology of an entire world, from pictures of only one locale?

 

Much in the same way that from a single rain drop we can infer Oceans.