A human colony on Europa

[Rabid]

So, long story short, I'm wondering how you could design a believable (not necessarily realistic) human colony on Europa (that moon of Jupiter).

Here are my assumptions :

• There is an ocean of liquid water on Europa, trapped between a multi-kilometer thick ice-crust and the silicate crust of the planet.
• The ocean stay liquid because of both the pressure and temperature.
• Living organisms have been genetically engineered to live and thrive in this ocean that can be eaten by humans as a food-source.
• The colony is self-sufficient as far as food goes, but may import a proportion of its need for metal and other industrial resources.
• The colony's primary energy source is geo-thermal energy.
• No antigravity : the surfaces-to-space shuttles are fuelled with an Hydrogen/Oxygen mix.
• Interplanetary travel is relatively quick (Earth-Jupiter travel is counted in weeks), using tiny pellet of deuterium/tritium shot at high frequency (several per second) and ignited to undergo nuclear fusion to achieve thrust.
• There are mining colonies in the main asteroid belt.

Here are my questions :

• Is this colony only there to house people, or does it produce something that other worlds in the Solar System lack ? Could it be an Agro-World ?
• What would it look like in practice ? Would people preferably be housed at the highest level of the under-ice sea, just beneath the ice, or would they prefer to be inside the ice, or at the very bottom of the ocean ? Would all the cities have fixed positions, or would some of them roam the ocean, changing position with time ?
• [Bonus Question] : Can I have a lunatic captain aboard his harvesting-submarine raving about how he his going to catch his dreaded nemesis, the Grey Medusa, which killed his previous crew and almost killed him ? Can I have a city named Rapture ?

Excuses as to how the oceans were seeded with life or as to why the moon was colonized may contain some amounts of, respectively, Weird ScienceTM and "Why the hell not ?".

[Stofsk]

Hi, I corrected your spelling of Europa since the title was a bit confusing.

[Rabid]

Yeah, thanks. Used the French name by habit.

[Stofsk]

Oh I didn't know the French name was different.

[Rabid]

Uh... I had spelled "Europe", right ? In this case, yeah, that's the French name. The same as Earth's continent.


Anyway, back on topic... I had this vision of submarine cities maintaining giant aqua-farms, suspended on the underside of the ice-crust, with long cables diving into the abyss, to connect the settlement to the geothermal power plants a hundred kilometer bellow.
And sometime some giant critters may damage the cables, which would need maintenance, in a very hazardous environment of high pressures and low temperatures....


And Japanese-descended colons making sushi with Space Whales and other Europan delicacies.

[Zinegata]

Basing this off the game High Frontier (which is a very "hard" sci-fi game)...

Europa could be part of a series of interdependent colonies, with Europa supplying food and water to other colonies (particularly in the asteroid belt) that mine for rare elements such as uranium but don't have a reliable source of food or (in some cases) water.

Europa has a fairly low escape velocity (much lower than Earth's), so it's much easier to launch goods from Europa than from Earth. Other sites may compete with them for supplying water (particularly Deimos, see here: http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_ ... pany.shtml) but their proximity to the 'belt and other potential colony sites (i.e. Titan) makes the Europa colony much more competitive. Not to mention that other sites won't have a complete biosphere like the under-ice ocean to provide a steady supply of "real" food.

The colony itself will likely be built inside the ice (think of Igloos), with a surface facility for launching spacecraft and a dock for submersibles below it. Building inside the ice is the most practical and cheapest way, as you just have to melt away some of the ice to form the walls and living spaces for your colony. If the ice is constantly shifting there will be risks of course, but building on top or under the ice pretty much carries the same risks anyway.

Having the base on the ocean floor is highly unlikely to be practical. We have trouble enough doing it in the real world, and it's not great policy to build your colony surrounded by a material that can suddenly rush in and wipe you out.

Finally, I'd note that nuclear power is probably much more realistic and practical as a power source than going all the way down to the bottom of the ocean for geothermal power. The colony will be getting uranium anyway from the 'belt. And don't forget the dangers of bone atrophy because of Europa's weak gravity on the colonists.

[Rabid]

Given fusion exist in this setting, I'd tend to think they would prefer using it over fission. No ?

[LaCroix]

Ok, I got ninja-ed for abundance of water and fission...

Alternative:
Use indirect geothermal energy - run pipes from the water up to the deep-frozen surface (or to the point where your medium won't turn solid, yet) and use a heat pump design - you have 270° temperature difference worth of energy you could use.

This would raise the efficiency of any primary power generation massively.

[Simon_Jester]

Given fusion exist in this setting, I'd tend to think they would prefer using it over fission. No ?

Not necessarily. It would depend on objective comparisons of what fusion is useful for, and how much machinery you have to ship out from Earth to get the power plant running. That's the real question- how big would a fission reactor need to be?

So, fission, fusion. Take your pick if you want; I'd go with fission but that's me. Something like this would be very desirable for the application, though, and while it's not yet practical demonstrated technology it's closer to that goal than a conveniently portable fusion reactor is.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/2 ... _000_homes

[Rabid]

Well, depending on the technobabble behind Fusion in this setting it could very well be less massive than fusion reactors, and more easily assembled from spare parts than a "fission battery".
It would also have the added advantage of being able to be fueled by local resources (hydrogen isotopes) and/or minerals more easily acquired than Uranium (neutron(s) + lithium = tritium + neutron(s)) AND of producing less radioactive wastes : how are you supposed to get rid of spent fuel rods/battery cores on an ocean planet ? Dropping it into the Abyss isn't an option, recycling is a bother, and shipping it back for reprocessing would also be a bother.


Anyway, RE : your link... Bloody hell, I have the impression of reading a news excerpt from the Atomic Age !

"Nuclear Power : Now In Everyone's Backyard, For A Brighter Tomorrow !"

Gawd, that's really Fallout-y...

[Rabid]

Also, if you have to house your reactors in the ice-cap, something that produce too much heat might be a liability depending on how you go around doing it...

[Zinegata]

I mention fission because I'm fairly sure there's uranium in the belt, and it justifies you colony's trading links with them.

Just because you have fusion doesn't necessarily mean it's the better power source always. If you're saying fusion can run off just water, then what's the point of trading with the 'belt?

[Rabid]

Hmm, not saying they would be using one energy source at the exclusion of the other, just that one may have some advantages over the other. It may be that depending on some parameters sometimes they'll use one and sometimes the other. Depends.

I was thinking of a colony with already a few dozen millions people in it, already a bit developed, with a net of cities dispersed around the planet to cultivate the sea-farms.

As for the relations with the 'belt, I was thinking more in terms of common construction materials like metals, and industrial goods requiring complex installation and rare materials : it would be difficult to mine the crust of Europa ; I'm not convinced it would be that easy to mine Io for Iron, Aluminum, Magnesium or other such elements ; and Ganymede and Callisto have thick ice-crusts themselves AFAIK.
So IMHO it would be easier to ship this kind of things from the mines-factories of the Belt.

[Zinegata]

Hmm, not saying they would be using one energy source at the exclusion of the other, just that one may have some advantages over the other. It may be that depending on some parameters sometimes they'll use one and sometimes the other. Depends.

I was thinking of a colony with already a few dozen millions people in it, already a bit developed, with a net of cities dispersed around the planet to cultivate the sea-farms.

As for the relations with the 'belt, I was thinking more in terms of common construction materials like metals, and industrial goods requiring complex installation and rare materials : it would be difficult to mine the crust of Europa ; I'm not convinced it would be that easy to mine Io for Iron, Aluminum, Magnesium or other such elements ; and Ganymede and Callisto have thick ice-crusts themselves AFAIK.
So IMHO it would be easier to ship this kind of things from the mines-factories of the Belt.

Ah, well if the colony is that much huge then yes it's probably going to have a much more extensive need of "basic" resources; and having the belt shoot out packets / rockets carrying metals while Europa fires ones loaded with food / water back would be sensible.

I didn't realize the colony was meant to be that big.

[Rabid]

Yeah, I should have been clearer. I meant "colony" as "the celestial body has been settled and lived-on for a few generations already".

As for the problem of de-calcification et. al., I suppose that by then there'll be treatments against the body's decay under low-gravity : it's not just the bones, but also the heart and the hormonal system which suffer under low-gravity. Maybe some gene-engineering ?

[Ariphaos]

Europa's small enough that moonstalks would not be impossible with modern materials. Make for easy departure.

[someone_else]

The colony's primary energy source is geo-thermal energy.

Jupiter's magnetosphere is POWERFUL.
You should be able to harness it with a enectrodynamic tether, abeit I don't really know enough to tell a power rating.

The colony is self-sufficient as far as food goes, but may import a proportion of its need for metal and other industrial resources.

Jupiter has significant amounts of random crap orbiting it. Imports from Earth can be complex tech, but most materials will likely come from a nearby object.

Is this colony only there to house people, or does it produce something that other worlds in the Solar System lack ? Could it be an Agro-World ?

Place some alien lifeform that has some use for pharmaceutical production or whatnot. So it can become a research station.

Not necessarily needed to place blue-skinned aliens, but may be useful to have alien boobs babes.

What would it look like in practice ?

Like a North Korean bunker complex carved in the icy surface of the planet. No sense in making it anywhere else. (you just need stuff for radiation protection, all the MURDEROUS PRESSURE you have at the various depths drives up costs for no reason)