Let's colonize Titan

[cjameshuff]

Here is an idea to run past you:

Let us say we can run tethers from Titan towards Saturn.
At what distance would the pull be great enough to lift large hydrocarbon burdens off the surface?
Titan is the best for ISRU.

If I've done the numbers right, the L1 point is a little over 50 thousand km from Titan, similar to the distance of EML1 from the moon. It's roughly similar to a lunar space elevator.

However, with Titan's atmosphere, it'll cost very little to deliver mass to the surface from orbit, and its low gravity and very extended atmosphere would make an "air breathing" booster far more effective than it'd be on Earth. An elevator would still be a bottleneck with limited throughput to a limited range of orbits and ground locations and scheduling issues with payloads competing for time on the tether, and its advantages would be greatly reduced.

[publiusr]

I was thinking about a longer tether to use Saturns gravity to pull large payloads off Titan, like volatiles. Too far perhaps.

[Roger E. Moore]

Astronomers estimate Titan's largest sea is 1,000 feet deep. Far below the gaseous atmospheric shroud on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, lies Kraken Mare, a sea of liquid methane. Cornell astronomers have estimated that sea to be at least 1,000 feet deep near its center - enough room for a potential robotic submarine to explore.

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/A..._deep_999.html