A different kind of jet engine

[pavelcherepan]

Just a thought here. Say, humanity goes to colonize Titan, which is awesome, much cooler than Mars both literally and figuratively. So, given that Titan has a nice and dense atmosphere in order to explore it faster using planes makes sense.

 

So a normal jet engine uses atmospheric oxygen as oxidizer and carries fuel with it. Atmosphere of Titan on the other hand has about 5% of methane (in the troposphere) and no oxygen so is there any roadblocks from engineering perspective in creating a jet engine that uses atmospheric fuel rather than oxidizer and carry oxidezer on board? It it possible to create an engine that would work on a 5% concentration of fuel in the air?

[Sensei]

Slightly derailing your original thread: why not use balloons.. ?

As long as it's less dense than surrounding atmosphere, it'll be flying and gathering data much longer than any airplane, or rocket..

You don't want to spend time flying couple years, spending billions of dollars, just to arrive and find out engine does not work.

[pavelcherepan]

Balloons are good, indeed, but what in my thoughts travelling around Titan itself would be just one of the purposes of jet engine. As far as I can see from Wiki page on SSTO, while it is pretty complicated for the example of the Earth, but Titan, having lower gravity, could support creation and use of reusable SSTO spacecraft even with the current technology. For this to work, spacecraft would have to first get up to Titan's stratosphere using aerodynamic lift and atmospheric fuel. Doing this will save a lot of delta-v that would otherwise be wasted on.

 

Obviously, this would be important not in case of a short-term mission, but in the case of colonization.

 

So then I was thinking, that on Earth methane creates an explosive mixture with air at concentrations between 5-15%, but that is with normal atmospheric air containing 21% of oxygen. If we use pure oxygen as oxidizer then even lower concentrations would be combustible, so it might even be possible to use it in Titan's stratosphere, which has just about 1.5% methane.

 

How does that sound?