Extracting Materials from Titan
Titan is (im)practically inaccessible. High delta V to get there and come back. Long round travel times.
Humans and their machines may someday occupy the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Titan's nitrogen atmosphere is a candidate source of reaction mass for thermal rockets, but Titan is a long way from Earth, and longer way (in travel time and Hohmann semimajor axis) from the asteroid belts.
Some numbers:
Earth year |
3.1557e7 seconds |
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Solar Gravitational Constant |
1.3271e20 m³/s² |
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Astronomical Unit |
1.496e11 meters |
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Planets & |
Orbit |
Period |
Velocity |
Escape |
outer |
|| Asteroids || SemiM AU || Years || km/s || km/s || surface ||
circular approximation |
|| Earth || 1.0 || 1.0 || 29.79 || 11.2 || N₂ O₂ ||
Mars |
1.524 |
1.881 |
24.13 |
5.03 |
CO₂ |
Vesta |
2.362 |
3.630 |
19.34 |
0.36 |
dust |
1 Ceres |
2.769 |
4.608 |
17.91 |
0.51 |
dust |
10 Hygiea |
3.142 |
5.568 |
16.76 |
0.21 |
dust |
Jupiter |
5.204 |
11.86 |
13.07 |
59.5 |
H₂ He |
Saturn |
9.583 |
29.46 |
9.68 |
35.5 |
H₂ He |
Satellites |
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|
SemiM km |
24h d |
km/s |
km/s |
|
Moon |
384400 |
27.322 |
1.02 |
2.376 |
dust |
Deimos |
23463 |
1.263 |
1.35 |
0.006 |
dust |
Titan |
1221870 |
15.945 |
5.57 |
2.639 |
N₂ |
Iapetus |
3560820 |
79.322 |
3.26 |
0.571 |
H₂O ice |