Posted on 01/21/2005 7:17:19 AM PST by Dallas59
The problem with oxygen as Lonesome noted is that it's very rare in the Universe to have free oxygen just floating around. When oxygen gets into a molecule it's stuck in there pretty good. Asteroids don't have free oxygen floating around.
It took blue-green algae and photosynthesis to give earth the free oxygen we currently have.
I did a search on hydrogen sulfide and this is what I always wanted to know, but never had the nerve to try!
grandma_fish (g_fish@email.com) -- 1.13.2003
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"If it's liquid, how is it gas?"
Just like propane (LPG or Liquified Petroleum Gas). Store it under intense pressure and it liquifies until released to normal atmosphere.
Al-Reuters via Yapoo is the best comment. Perfect characterizations.
Rumor over at DU is Bush will grant Halliburton the rights to build a pipeline from Titan to Texas!!! ;-)
Taking into account that I almost flunked Chem in college, my assumption is that the nuke would vaporize the water in the comet, providing "free" oxygen. If, after the intial flash of the nuke, there was excess oxygen gas, then would it be possible to ignite the methane?
Oh, and for the "peaceful" people on this board who don't like the thought of using nukes, perhaps we could use a gigantic Zippo lighter instead....
"Sounds like an ideal future refueling point for extrasolar exploration."
Exactly what I thought.
I wonder how much would be consumed, however, lifting off from Titan.
Some sort of Lando-Calrisian-Cloud-City-Refining might be the practical answer, believe it or not.
In that world, oxygen would be the fuel. You can send oxygen to a bunson burner, for example, in a methane atmosphere and get what is, by all appearances, an ordinary flame.
Are you agreeing with me, disagreeing, or simply adding imput? ambiguous post.
Hey Thoughtomator! what's up?
I think we, (The United States) have the capability to bring this resource to earth, and we can create new jobs, capitalize on it, it's an easy take for us, the rest of the world can scramble cause we can have the monopoly for a while
We can make methane gase prices plummet to worthless. Can we make it happen? China can buy lots and we'll buy the weapons from them, same with NK,Irn, france, well. France, we can just blow our noses on those white flags. ;) /sarc over
Can methane be converted to a safe useable fuel in our cars?
OTOH, if you could bombard titan with frozen oxygen asteroids enough, you could turn all that methane into water (which would promptly freeze solid, negating the actual utility of such an endeavour).
Oh, considering the minor issue of transport costs of Methane from Saturn to Earth, I bet we could get the cost of our space Natural Gas down to maybe 50 million dollars per cubic foot. That will be sure to put earth-based Natural Gas producers out of business.
Not liquid. Liquified. "Liquid" natural gas would be stupid. They say liquified natural gas because liquified methane wouldn't be understood by as many people.
Disagreeing..... My hypothesis is that the nuke would sever the H and O bonds, providing the free oxygen that would allow burning...
No Oxygen = No Explosion.
"So.... If we reshape the orbit of an ice comet... providing the "O", and torch off a 1 megaton nuke, how long would Titan burn? "
In H2O "ice comet" wouldn't burn at all Water doesn't burn. A liquid oxygen planet colliding with Titan would be a different story however.
That's not what I heard...
Now if Exxon & NASA could only build a realllly big tanker.....
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