The main sources of energy for the future colony on Saturn's moon Titan may be the distant Sun and the tides in the Kraken Sea.
The largest of Saturn's moons, Titan, is the only place in the entire solar system in the entire solar system besides the Earth, where the liquid cycle takes place. And although this liquid is methane, and its rivers and lakes flow between the asphalt shores under a very distant and dim Sun, in general, Titan is considered one of the most promising places for the search for extraterrestrial life. Of course, existing in such exotic conditions, it can hardly be like ours.
If we ourselves need to master Titan, then here we will have to build serious protection and life support systems necessary for people and our satellites. Nevertheless, the satellite should not be discounted: after all, there are not so many bodies in the solar system suitable for exploration in principle, with a solid surface, minimal gravity, etc. American geophysicists Amanda Hendrix and Yuke Yuk Yung examined the energies of such a future inhabited colony on Titan. Their article is published by the Journal of Astrobiology & Outreach.
Of course, the colony on Titan may well rely on the delivery of energy from the outside - for example, fuel for the nuclear or thermonuclear reactors installed here. However, it will be much more efficient to use the local resources of the satellite: after all, its reserves of combustible hydrocarbons are believed to be orders of magnitude greater than anything that can be found on Earth. In the absence of readily available oxygen, it is not easy to burn them.
The situation with hydropower is no simpler. Rains on Titan are rare, real currents appear spontaneously and extremely rarely, and local lakes are strikingly calm against the backdrop of earthly ones. It is theoretically possible to create new channels to use the liquid from these lakes and to establish dams. In principle, this is possible, although, according to the authors of the work, it will become an extremely costly engineering project.
Much more interesting, in their opinion, is the tidal energy of Titan. Passing in the inhomogeneous gravitational field of the mighty Saturn, the satellite experiences a powerful effect of tidal forces that create strong tides in its lakes. The largest of them, the Kraken Sea, rises a meter, and the energy of all this wave rushes to the narrow strait separating the northern and southern parts of the sea, the Seldon Fretum. Amanda Hendrix compares it to Gibraltar on Earth: in her opinion, it is quite possible to place turbines here that would collect the energy of the daily flow of liquid and generate electricity.
The Kraken Sea as seen by the Cassini probe; Seldon Strait - or the "Throat of the Kraken" - visible just below and to the right of the center of the image / & copy; NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASI / USGS
Wind power on Titan remains controversial. On the one hand, its atmosphere is quite dense (1.5 times denser than the earth's), and the formation of dunes on the surface indicates that winds, at least from time to time, blow here. On the other hand, we have not yet received direct evidence of them, their strength and dynamics of change. Judging by the data of the Huygens probe, which passed through Titan's atmosphere in 2005, in the upper layers of its winds are still strong enough. Therefore, Hendricks and Yun believe that using this energy will require not ordinary wind turbines, but flying ones, placed, for example, on airships or kites.
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Finally, is solar energy possible at a distance ten times farther from the Sun than the Earth is? Here, under the often overcast atmosphere, it is always twilight, but scientists believe that this is not a problem either. If a large enough array of panels were deployed on Titan, they could handle securing the colony. Hendrix and Yoon estimate that for the needs of 300 million people (US population), about 10 percent of Titan's area will need to be covered with panels.
This space is comparable to that of the United States; according to scientists, on Earth, the same number of people would be enough "less than 10 percent of the area of Kansas." On Titan, one more problem will have to be solved - cleaning the panels. Surrounded by fluid organic matter, their surface will quickly become dirty, reducing the efficiency of energy generation. But if you already cover 10 percent of the area of Saturn's moon, billions of kilometers from Earth and in extremely unfavorable conditions, you can somehow cope with cleaning the panels.
Sergey Vasiliev