Would you like to visit Titan? ( LARGE MPEG: 83 MB)

Check out this animation, from reprocessed Cassini/Huygens images.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEMA7UMZCIE_0.html

NOTE: The first image you see is the Sun; then zoom out to Saturn orbit, glide into Titan's dense, foggy atmosphere (be patient, it's not that long), and finally descend slowly under parachute. Crunch/splat, tilt camera downward.

Or try reading the books by Stephen Baxter and John Varley (two books, different authors, same title).

Interesting to note that the site is now esa.int, used to be esa.eu. There are currents flowing out in the world of which we are not a part, stranded in a backwater of neocon making.

thanks!

here's the link for the mpeg version: http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/video/Huygens_Movie.mpeg

I didn't even know it was ever esa.eu

google only finds 12 webpages that reference www.esa.eu
and no usenet references

but about 991,000 webpages reference www.esa.int
and 6,250 usenet references.

http://www.esa.int/images/Huygens_movie_L.swf :)

:)

Not only is it a pessimistic view of the future of space travel (an overburdened economy and scarce resources have virtually halted US space flight), it's an improbable premise (old Saturn boosters and shuttles re-tooled for a ten-year mission to Titan) with a depressing fatalism (a few astronauts who plan it as a one-way trip and the hardships that kill them off one-by one), it ends in the suicides of those not killed and/or driven mad plus the gratuitous ending of life (or at least civilization) on Earth in a nuclear war. And they don't discover life on Titan. Ugh.

The "happy" ending is the near-magical resurrection of a pair of the astronauts a billion years later by intelligent Titanians who evolved as the sun warmed over eons.