<story><title>NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/06/titan-saturn-nasa-dragonfly/592882/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cwkoss</author><text>In addition to lack of solar energy, I wonder if nuclear power source is necessary to keep batteries or other electronics warm enough to function properly.&lt;p&gt;Conversely, on Titan, we won&amp;#x27;t need to worry about heat sinks as everything is kept at ~94K in a bath of liquid and frozen methane.  Perhaps in a few hundred years AWS&amp;#x27;s most popular region for intensive compute will be under Titan&amp;#x27;s methane sea.  High spin up cost, but cheap super-conduction environment once you&amp;#x27;re up.</text></item><item><author>rzimmerman</author><text>A flying drone is a really solid idea for a Titan lander for a couple reasons:&lt;p&gt;* The surface atmosphere density is higher than Earth&amp;#x27;s (1.5 atm)&lt;p&gt;* Gravitational force is much lower (0.15g)&lt;p&gt;* We don&amp;#x27;t know a lot about the surface composition or topography, so wheels and motors represent a challenge&lt;p&gt;* Visibility may be poor, making visual navigation tricky (though that&amp;#x27;s also a problem for a flying vehicle I suppose)&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard people ask about &amp;quot;why a nuclear power source?&amp;quot; Saturn is 10x as far from the sun as Earth, so sunlight is about 1&amp;#x2F;100th as bright. In addition, Titan&amp;#x27;s atmosphere blocks most of that. There really isn&amp;#x27;t any other realistic option.&lt;p&gt;I hope it works and they take videos.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gene-h</author><text>Interestingly they actually exploit these cold temperatures to keep things cool. The Dragonfly Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer(DraGNS)&amp;#x27;s gamma ray detector is mounted outside.[0] In most other probes the detector would need to kept cold with a cryocooler.
[0]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.jhuapl.edu&amp;#x2F;techdigest&amp;#x2F;TD&amp;#x2F;td3403&amp;#x2F;34_03-Lorenz.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.jhuapl.edu&amp;#x2F;techdigest&amp;#x2F;TD&amp;#x2F;td3403&amp;#x2F;34_03-Lorenz.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan</title><url>https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/06/titan-saturn-nasa-dragonfly/592882/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cwkoss</author><text>In addition to lack of solar energy, I wonder if nuclear power source is necessary to keep batteries or other electronics warm enough to function properly.&lt;p&gt;Conversely, on Titan, we won&amp;#x27;t need to worry about heat sinks as everything is kept at ~94K in a bath of liquid and frozen methane.  Perhaps in a few hundred years AWS&amp;#x27;s most popular region for intensive compute will be under Titan&amp;#x27;s methane sea.  High spin up cost, but cheap super-conduction environment once you&amp;#x27;re up.</text></item><item><author>rzimmerman</author><text>A flying drone is a really solid idea for a Titan lander for a couple reasons:&lt;p&gt;* The surface atmosphere density is higher than Earth&amp;#x27;s (1.5 atm)&lt;p&gt;* Gravitational force is much lower (0.15g)&lt;p&gt;* We don&amp;#x27;t know a lot about the surface composition or topography, so wheels and motors represent a challenge&lt;p&gt;* Visibility may be poor, making visual navigation tricky (though that&amp;#x27;s also a problem for a flying vehicle I suppose)&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve heard people ask about &amp;quot;why a nuclear power source?&amp;quot; Saturn is 10x as far from the sun as Earth, so sunlight is about 1&amp;#x2F;100th as bright. In addition, Titan&amp;#x27;s atmosphere blocks most of that. There really isn&amp;#x27;t any other realistic option.&lt;p&gt;I hope it works and they take videos.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ajmurmann</author><text>Hah, I was always intrigued by the idea of placing solar cells on the bright side of Mercury and servers on the dark side. I wonder what other good options might exist in the solar system.</text></comment>