Does NASA have plans to use Titan's methane lakes to fuel further space exploration?

Question

Can we set titan on fire?

Answer 1

No, too far down the gravity well.

Answer 2

While that was an awesome discovery, we wont need methane for rocket fuel in the future.

Fusion reactors that will finish development in around 2020-2024, maybe as soon as 2018 will solve energy needs. While it will be siphoning plasma from the reaction process to generate electricity, it can also be siphoned off to generate thrust. A tiny drop of water or other reaction mass with plasma will create quite a violent disturbance. We only need to fire it within a nozzle. A future space shuttle will use such an engine to break earths atmosphere under its own power. So it wont need rocket boosters or a tank. Similarly, by the time we can cost efficiently GET to titan, meaning with the use of Fusion reactors=fusion engines, we will already have a rocket/booster alternative.

An offshoot of this tech is that you will have ALOT more thrust available, which will allow shorter travel times between vast distances. This increase in velocity would make mining asteriods and comets feasable. You could slow one down, and tow it near the moon, and break it down, extract the water, methane and other chemical and mineral compounds. Asteriods would provide many more times the tons of raw ores that the whole world processes in a YEAR. SO, everything is hanging on when we get those fusion reactors working.. 400 seconds of plasma will mean a stable reaction within the torus. I think we are at 26 seconds now or something? With more reactor projects coming online and being built, more data can be cross referenced for faster results. The great thing is that there is no such thing as a catastrophic disaster =)

Hold your breaths and keep an eye on the Fusion Reactor. Things will change then, for sure.

Answer 3

There's more than just Titan to explore for such resources. Other wise we may end up using too many resources in sarcrifice for this fuel. On the other hand we could consider the solar system our own giant resouce facility if everything on earth is not efficient enough by the time we have the reight technologies and we nearly used up every source imaginable on Earth. Still there are no near future plans...

Answer 4

That, I don't know....though I do recall an engineer who concocted a way to use a catalyst to convert water and CO2 in Mars' atmosphere into methane for rocket fuel. Basically, you would send the spacecraft on autopilot about 6 months before the manned mission, and its tanks would be filled up and ready to launch by the time the astronauts arrived....

Answer 5

Well first let's explore Titan. That moon is no doubt full of surprises for us, and if those lakes are also a mix of hydrocarbons or maybe even life I doubt we would want to disturb it. There's enough to keep us busy there before we start 'raping' another planet for our needs.

Answer 6

First: Where would you get the oxygen from?

Second: By the time you have develloped a system to get there, you probably already have other means of energy sources.

Answer 7

CH4 is useful only if you have oxygen!
Th