Titan Has Enough Propane For 23 Million Trips Around the Earth
New findings from the Cassini mission to Titan — Saturn’s largest moon — show that its atmosphere contains about 29 billion gallons of propane.
Given that the average new car fuel economy in the US is currently about 20 miles per gallon, and that propane-converted cars get about the same mileage as regular gas cars, there’s enough propane on Titan to take one average car more than 23 million times around the Earth’s equator.
Wow! So what you say? Even though that may sound staggering, you still aren’t convinced that it really means anything to you? What if I told you this: that’s only enough propane to satisfy the propane needs of the US for 18 months.
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Now that’s truly impressive. Think about that. All of the propane on Titan is only enough to satisfy the needs of the US for a year and a half. A whole planet’s worth of propane.
We hear so much about how good propane could be for reducing emissions because it burns cleaner than gas. Converting a gas powered car to run on propane is a relatively easy and inexpensive thing to do (PDF), and there are currently about 190,000 propane-fueled vehicles on US roads (uh, please ignore the risk of a botched conversion).
While it may be true that propane cars are spewing less pollution into our atmosphere than gas cars, the US already uses so much propane that in 18 months it would deplete all the propane out of the atmosphere of a planet that has roughly 16% the land area of Earth.
To me, statistics like this put some real perspective on why we need to shift away from fossil fuels in general. Any fossil fuel we choose (oil, coal, propane, etc.), regardless of how less polluting it is than other ones, is still just a band-aid on the problem that eventually we will run out of them.
I’m a big believer in doing things right the first time. It saves a lot of hassle. If you’re constantly just putting band-aids on the problem and doing a half-assed job you end up doing way more work down the road. If we’re talking about our energy future and how to make it sustainable for, well, ever, it doesn’t make sense to plan on using any fossil fuels at all. Let’s do it right the first time.
Source: NASA (Via ScienceDaily)
Image Credit: NASA
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September 8th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Gotta love our solar system neighbors. Thinking of us. Too bad we need more than all they’ve got.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Straight “Propane” is not the same as “Auto Gas”
The propane used for automobile fuel is generally a mixture of propane and butane…
OTH
I’d love to have an engine in my Focus that was turbocharged and ran on Propane…
September 8th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
This is a a testament to the fact that we shouldn’t burn anything for our energy and transportation needs. It’s so 20th century.
September 8th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Somehow I don’t think taking such a large amount of something from a planet is a good idea…
September 9th, 2009 at 4:03 am
Without knowing what proportion of Titan’s mass this propane represents, the comparison being made here is difficult to interpret. My guess is that the proportion must be pretty small (or that Titan itself is much smaller than I realized).
September 9th, 2009 at 4:04 am
John,
IMHO, you’re getting very nit-picky. Even if Propane made up half a percent of Titan’s atmosphere, it’s a whole planet sized moon with roughly 75% of the surface area of Mars we’re talking about. Imagine how much even .01% of Earth’s atmosphere is. No matter how much you nit-pick, it’s a huge amount.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Aix – Titan is not a planet it is a moon of Saturn.
But then I’m still pissed about them downgrading Pluto so call it a planet if you like with my blessing.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:01 am
MB,
In a technical sense you’re right, Titan is certainly not a planet. But calling something a moon that has about 75% of the surface area of Mars just doesn’t seem to do it justice in a more abstract kind of sense.
September 9th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Doesn’t using Electric Vehicles whose ultimate source of electricity is fossil fuels another band aid?
September 9th, 2009 at 8:53 am
roystarman,
See my post about the Audi US President calling the Chevy Volt a “car for idiots” to understand why I think EVs are not a band-aid even given the current ratio of fossil fuel power to renewable power. That post is here:
http://gas2.org/2009/09/03/audi-chief-calls-chevy-volt-a-car-for-idiots/
September 9th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Hey, Nick,
Where is the credit for the article that you copied from?
Failure to give proper credit is called “Plagiarism”.
The article is from Saturn Daily. The URL is:
http://www.saturndaily.com/reports/Saturn_Moon_Could_Power_150_Billion_Labor_Day_Barbecues_999.html
September 9th, 2009 at 9:54 am
ChuckL,
You should probably do a little more research before you go accusing folks of something as serious as plagiarism. I’ve never done it in my life and I haven’t done it here.
Firstly, the original article appeared over at NASA’s Cassini page (listed at the end of my article under “source”). The article you found at saturndaily.com is in fact a plagiarism itself, giving no credit to the original article at NASA. In fact, saturndaily.com credits the writing to “staff writers” while at the same time using the exact words of the original article. That, sir, is plagiarism.
Secondly, as I indicated at the end of my post under the heading “source”, I got tuned into this topic via ScienceDaily, which got the press release from NASA.
Thirdly, all the calculations of how far the propane would take a car are my own based on the numbers available in the press release. Those are completely original calculations.
I know it makes you feel smug to think you “got me,” because for some reason you don’t like me (which I have yet to understand). But all you did, sir, is make yourself look bad. I believe you owe me an apology.
In the future, before you waste your time and mine with baseless accusations, please do some deeper research.
September 10th, 2009 at 7:39 am
Nick,
My point is that we will need new power plants. No one is stepping upto say, “Yes put one Here in my part of town”. Some are so adamantly against it they don’t want new plants at all or even in their state. So far unless you happen to live in teh Pacific Northwest or next to Yellowstone park or other Geothermal active site, the chance that a large amount of your electrcity comes from “renewable sources” is vanishingly small. Even all those windmills you seein Texas and Ca don’t make that much electrcity compared to one of those steam plants. So for the rest of us we will need those nasty Hydrocarbon burning or Nuclear plants. As for NIMBY remember they had issues trying to put Windmills of the Cape Cod Coast in ultra liberal Mass. This doesn’t cover the environmental waste assciated with producing all these batteries. 15G will buy a lot of Gasoline.
January 28th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
So first of all we no know the world is not flat! But someone is wrong and half of what we have been told is wrong.If this is fuel from organics and it’s all over Titan then some ones missed something other there was life there or more Likely our fuel is not comming from where they say.or life is so common that like water it just sticks around and over billions of years of life just got ended up there?some one must know the real answer it’s not that hard they must know everything that’s in it?someone is keeping the truth from us.