Cryovolcanism
Cryovolvanism is volcanism in our solar system that instead of molten rock
vents more or less salty water or fluids that are liquid at even lower temperatures like ammonia.
Contents
Why cryovolcanism is exciting
- Robots can dive in and explore the cryovolcanic channel system without the need for extreme heat resistance (given cracks are big enough).
- Diving down just a few meters deep already gives perfect shielding against space radiation. Good for space probes, even better for astronauts.
- The radiation shielding water essentially replaces a thick atmosphere (that is only present on Titan, Venus, the four gas giants, and Earth of course).
- The radiation shielding water makes burying oneself under regolith obsolete.
- The radiation shielding water makes climbing down vacuum "filled" lavatubes obsolete.
- The water provides strong buoyancy allowing for easy 3D navigation (no wheels or legs)
- The water may provide decent amounts of dissolved elements that maybe can be used for manufacturing - some day with advanced APM
Are the cracks big enough to enter?
By the time of writing (2020) we certainly know about the existence of cryovolcanism, but how big the cryovolcanic cracks actually are is still hard to tell. The images we have today (2020) where all taken from orbit and thus do not provide enough resolution to tell us whether there are some openings that are at least about meter sized (like a big Earth geyser) where robotic probes could directly and unbobstructedly enter.
On Earth volcanic cracks are typically small but we do have some lava lakes which may be connected to bigger supply channels. A better analogy might be geysers. There too are ones with openings that would be big enough for a probe to enter. Finding ones big enough for a crewed submarine to fit in is another story, but when it comes to colonization carrying a reactor along to melt away obstructions may be an option. Unlike elsewhere refreezing might be very slow or absent, thus a system for fast transport can be more easily built up. (At other non-cryovolcanic placed where refreezing is very fast one might wanna make (from local resources) vacuum "filled" tubes with strong lining walls. This seems much more difficult).
Geysers on Earth feature clear water, so if the vents are not too active and agitated it seems very reasonable to expect to find some vents that are filled with clear water allowing to take direct visual video footage.
Comparison to "conventional" volcanism on Earth
In case of "conventional" Earth like volcanism (and beyond) we have:
(listed by increasing potential "divability")
- very red hot and super viscous basaltic lava
- barely red hot carbonatite lava [1]
- cooking hot mud volcanoes
- geysers
All of these (except the last one) spew out an opaque and highly viscous medium.
(maybe one could do some sonar navigation in mud volcano channels)
In context of advanced APM
- What useful elements can be expected to be dissolved in the water (filtering)
- How to build a research base or colonization habitat in there given these materials
Locations of cryovolcanism
Essentially all the places where subsurface ocean is suspected. But cryovolcanism might be present even without an open subsurface ocean.
External Links
Wikipedia:
