Inspenet, July 12, 2023.
Despite the fact that our planet has abundant hydrocarbon reserves, which are found mainly in Russia and the Persian Gulf, the most significant is found on Titan: Saturn’s moon.
In addition to sharing many features with Earth, Titan (which is not Saturn’s only satellite) has a rocky surface with vast expanses of liquid on its surface.
Another similar aspect is the environment, since storms and anticyclones are present. However, on Titan, the seas are made up of methane, while the deserts are made up of silicates and hydrocarbons.
As part of the exploration missions, the Cassini-Huygens probe calculated the depth of one of Titan’s seas in 2013, revealing that this moon has 40 times more hydrocarbons than all the existing oil reserves on Earth combined .
Is mining on Saturn’s moon viable?
The Earth’s resources have various uses, the best known being its application to obtain fuel. However, thanks to the abundance of hydrocarbon resources on Titan, this place becomes a very attractive commercial destination, despite several problems and dilemmas along the way.
In the first place, the exploitation of these resources must be profitable, but the necessary technology is currently not available. Even if it did, the hydrocarbons on this moon probably aren’t valuable enough to make the effort worth it.
However, their existence raises the issue of the feasibility of space mining. NASA itself has stated that the value of the minerals stored in the asteroid belt of the Solar System is equivalent to approximately 100 billion dollars for each inhabitant of the Earth .
Making a comparison, the annual production of raw metals on Earth reaches 660 million dollars, while in the extracted asteroids it could amount to a million quadrillion, that is, a number followed by thirty zeros. This would completely change the paradigm of the current world economy.
In 2014, students at Tel Aviv University estimated that the first shipment of metals from an asteroid to Earth could cause the price of gold to drop by as much as 50%, and the same would happen for other metals mined from space. In the case of Titán, this would also have an impact on the hydrocarbons market.
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