Comment Propel Titan back to Earth? (Score 1) 555
Why bother fetching it back in small rockets when you can propel the entire rock back?
Can we use a lot of tiny propeller rockets installed on Titan to gradually push it off the orbit and toward earth? These rockets only needs to carry oxygen or other oxidizer to burn the hydrocarben on Titan, and this process may happen very slowly, i.e., in several hundreds or thousand years. When it becomes a satellite of earth we can burn it outside of earth atmosphere and send the energy back in the form of microwave/laser.
Additionally, in this long time frame, as Titan is getting nearer to earth, we can continuously improve the propeller technology and more easily install more powerful rockets on Titan, so the process would be an accelerating process, though initially it would be very slow.
No idea how long it would last as I'm not familiar with rocket science, but if this process would take more than 1000 years I guess we could probably have advanced beyond relying on hydrocarbon energy already, then the entire idea does not make any sense anymore, as someone has pointed out.
Can we use a lot of tiny propeller rockets installed on Titan to gradually push it off the orbit and toward earth? These rockets only needs to carry oxygen or other oxidizer to burn the hydrocarben on Titan, and this process may happen very slowly, i.e., in several hundreds or thousand years. When it becomes a satellite of earth we can burn it outside of earth atmosphere and send the energy back in the form of microwave/laser.
Additionally, in this long time frame, as Titan is getting nearer to earth, we can continuously improve the propeller technology and more easily install more powerful rockets on Titan, so the process would be an accelerating process, though initially it would be very slow.
No idea how long it would last as I'm not familiar with rocket science, but if this process would take more than 1000 years I guess we could probably have advanced beyond relying on hydrocarbon energy already, then the entire idea does not make any sense anymore, as someone has pointed out.
