The Future Of Humanity On Moons
If you watch the news for a certain period of time, you may see a quick blurb about science. A pundit reading off of a teleprompter will quickly mention about a scientific discovery about a moon that may have liquid water on it before cutting away to a 20 minute segment about a celebrity was pulled over with Marijuana and an unlicensed drug. Guess which story is trending within an hour of the initial report? Yeah, it’s the celebrity. It’s that focus on people and things that don’t matter that leads to the public not caring about discovery.
In the 60’s, the space age was in full-swing where the USSR and the USA dropped loads of money on space technology that led us to the Moon. America got bored with going to the Moon because it was doing the same thing over and over again. Once America retired that type of exploration vehicle, they unveiled the Space Shuttle. This got everyone excited again. It looked like a space plane and excited every child on the planet just to watch it lift off.
Decades later, the Shuttle program was retired. The sad thing wasn’t that it was retired, it was that nothing was immediately there to replace it. The Apollo program ended and then Space Shuttle was the next big thing. Now, the Space Shuttle was recently retired, and we have nothing really exciting to look forward to. Could we have been exploring further out into our Solar System? YES! But why haven’t we? One word: Budget.
- Current NASA budget: 17.8 billion, according to a 2012 report
- Current American Military Budget: $554.2 billion + $88.5 billion, according to a 2013 report
What does all of that information mean? The discovery of potential places to inhabit in our Solar System that are discovered on such a small budget are so close, but so far away because the NASA budget is miniscule. Imagine if NASA has $200 billion to work with for 3 years. We went to the Moon in the 60’s, and we haven’t really been anywhere since. No human foot has set foot on another planet or moon since December of 1972. That’s 43 years. In those 43 years, America and many nations have built an International Space Station. It’s the size of a football field and it’s an amazing achievement, but it’s also in the Earth’s orbit and takes us nowhere.
To start to expand humanity’s dominance over our own Solar System, we need to expand with new colonies that have resources that can be used to self-sustain the new inhabitants. NASA has found a few the could be potential starting points on our journey through the Solar System and hopefully to the stars beyond our own.
Currently, there are 4 moons that seem to have the potential for humans to colonize (besides the planet Mars).
For astrobiologists, these may be the four most tantalizing moons in our Solar System. Shown at the same scale, their exploration by interplanetary spacecraft has launched the idea that moons, not just planets, could have environments supporting life. The Galileo mission to Jupiter discovered Europa’s global subsurface ocean of liquid water and indications of Ganymede’s interior seas. At Saturn, the Cassini probe detected erupting fountains of water ice from Enceladus indicating warmer subsurface water on even that small moon, while finding surface lakes of frigid but still liquid hydrocarbons beneath the dense atmosphere of large moon Titan. Now looking beyond the Solar System, new research suggests that sizable exomoons, could actually outnumber exoplanets in stellar habitable zones. That would make moons the most common type of habitable world in the Universe. (Via NASA)
There are hundreds of moons in the Solar System, but as mentioned above, they don’t have the potential like these four moons.
TITAN
Titan is the largest moon that surrounds Saturn. The surface lacks liquid water, but carbon and methane emissions in the atmosphere suggest there could support some sort of life that exists on the moon. What the surface lacks in liquid water, it could have a surplus of subsurface water that humans can tap into.
We conduct three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of hypervelocity impacts into the crust of Titan to determine the fraction of liquid water generated, under the reasonable assumption that the crust is largely water ice, and to track the fate of the organic-rich layer that is thought to overlie the ice over much of the surface. Impactors larger than a kilometer in diameter are only slightly affected by the atmosphere, while those well under that size are strongly decelerated and broken up before reaching the surface. Impact of a 2 km diameter icy projectile into the crust at velocities of 7 km per second or higher, and angles of impact between 30° and 45°, generate about 2–5% melt by volume within the crater. Our results for the amount of aqueous melt generated in impacts on Titan are broadly consistent with the analytic model developed by Thompson and Sagan (1992) although our numerical model allows us to more precisely quantify the fraction of melt, and fate of the organics, as a function of the impact parameters. While much of the organic surface layer is heavily shocked and ejected from the immediate region of the crater, a significant fraction located behind the oblique impact trajectory is only lightly shocked and is deposited in the liquid water at the crater base. Simple calculations suggest that the resulting aqueous organic phase may remain liquid for hundreds of years or longer, enough time for the synthesis of simple precursor molecules to the origin of life. (Via Sciencedirect)
A sub-surface ocean of liquid water and ammonia. This could mean life and a source of water to sustain future colonists, but we just don’t know enough yet.
EUROPA
Europa is a moon that surrounds the planet Jupiter, and was discovered by Galileo. Along with Titan, it is one of the most talked about moons when it comes to life and water by modern scientists.
“Europa may be more Earth-like than we imagined, if it has a global plate tectonic system,” Kattenhorn says. “Not only does this discovery make it one of the most geologically interesting bodies in the solar system, it also implies two-way communication between the exterior and interior — a way to move material from the surface into the ocean — a process which has significant implications for Europa’s potential as a habitable world.”
Previous scientific findings point to the existence of a liquid water ocean located under the moon’s icy crust. This ocean covers Europa entirely and contains more liquid water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.
Galileo’s many firsts include discovering evidence for the existence of a saltwater ocean beneath Europa’s icy surface. The mission officially was ended when Galileo plunged into Jupiter’s atmosphere in September 2003 to prevent an impact with Europa. The mission was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. (Via NASA)
The liquid oceans seem pretty deep below the icy crust, but if there was to be an ambitious mission to the moon, there will be a plan in action to access it, not to many numerous probes to find out if it is even worth it. No one likes showing up to a party without a ticket, and no astronauts enjoy showing up to a planet or moon to find out it was a waste of a journey.
GANYMEDE
Ganymede is a moon that surrounds Jupiter and happens to be the largest moon discovered in the Solar System. It’s about 3/4 the size of Mars, and if it were to break orbit from Jupiter and begin an orbit around the Sun, it would be a planet. Ganymed — as the others moons — has a substantial amount of ice that future potential colonists could tap into.
Scientists have also found that it has a metal core, covered by a rock mantle which is itself covered by a very thick sheet of ice. In this new observation, as Schenk was studying data from NASA’s Galileo space probe—he noticed an unusual and previously unknown bulge on the moon’s equator.
The researchers proposed at the conference that the bulge came about due to polar wandering—where ice built up at one of the poles and then slid over the top of an ocean below, to the equator, which provides more evidence for the existence of such an ocean (another team announced just two weeks ago that study of the moon’s auroras had provided evidence of an ocean)—polar wandering can only happen if an ice cap sits atop something slippery, like an ocean—if that explanation holds true, than other researchers have pointed out that another similar bulge should exist on the other side of the moon, but we will not know if that is true until another space craft makes its way to the moon. (Via)
Once again, we’ll have to figure out a way to get at this water. 100 miles below the surface isn’t exactly easy to get to. Hell, the deepest hole drilled on this planet is the Sakhalin-I Odoptu OP-11 Well, and that’s only 40,502 ft deep. Quite a bit away from the 100 mile mark.
Enceladus
Enceladus, another moon circling Saturn, Guess what it also has? A huge ocean beneath its surface. But, what makes this one different from the others? Thermal plumes containing water booming through the South Pole. This means that we can not only get water, but use the geothermal power as a form of energy.
“We previously knew of at most three places where active volcanism exists: Jupiter’s moon Io, Earth, and possibly Neptune’s moon Triton. Cassini changed all that, making Enceladus the latest member of this very exclusive club, and one of the most exciting places in the solar system,” said Dr. John Spencer, Cassini scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.
“Other moons in the solar system have liquid-water oceans covered by kilometers of icy crust,” said Dr. Andrew Ingersoll, imaging team member and atmospheric scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. “What’s different here is that pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface.”
Other unexplained oddities now make sense. “As Cassini approached Saturn, we discovered that the Saturnian system is filled with oxygen atoms. At the time we had no idea where the oxygen was coming from,” said Dr. Candy Hansen, Cassini scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “Now we know that Enceladus is spewing out water molecules, which break down into oxygen and hydrogen.” (Via NASA)
“What’s different here is that pockets of liquid water may be no more than tens of meters below the surface.” That is manageable. Instead of transporting massive drills or heated lasers to blast through 100 miles of ice, this could be done in an easier fashion that makes this moon look the most promising.
The problem we face is that we just simply can’t afford to try to do much of this. Sure, we can send probes that makes the public pay attention for a moment, but then go back to human created problems like war, starvation and military build-up. ‘
- September 12, 1962 – John F. Kennedy delivered his “Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort”, or better known simply as the “We choose to go to the moon” speech, was delivered by then U.S. President John F. Kennedy in front of a large crowd gathered at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
- July 20, 1969 – Apollo 11 landed 2 men on the moon.
It took John F. Kennedy one speech to inspire a nation to leave this rock… how about we do it again?
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.
Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com