Uncategorized

Did You Know You Could Fly on Saturn’s Moon?

What if You Could Fly?

Flying has always been a dream. People have written books and made movies of people floating in mid-air, and with the right materials, people in the past have made “wings” so they can float with the wind. These believers created the illusion for themselves and others of flight.

Otto Lilienthal, a German engineer studied flight from the Wright Brothers and examined how birds fly. He eventually created the glider, pictured below, in 1889 which was a big step for flying in the world.

Otto Lilienthal’s glider.

Now, 128 years later, we know that on Titan, Saturn’s moon, it is actually possible for a person to fly in its skies. Titan’s atmosphere is very thick, thicker than our moon, and the surface pressure is fifty percent of Earth’s.

This all means that just “by flapping a pair of wings strapped to your arms, you could fly in [Titan’s] skies with no more effort than walking.” stated by Space Answers.  

This is Titan from the NASA Cassini spacecraft.

It’s interesting because Saturn’s moon has a similar climate system as Earth.

“I distinctly recall the dreamy feeling of being in one universe one moment and in another universe the next, but it was no dream. We had, without doubt, journeyed to Titan, 10 times farther from the sun than the Earth, and touched it. The solar system suddenly seemed a very much smaller place.” Leader Carolyn Porco, a part of Nasa’s Cassini spacecraft team, writes.

 

The Cassini spacecraft took images of it descending
into Titan’s atmosphere on January 14, 2005.
Image Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The thought of flying has crept into most minds and has stuck with them. With the rate in which we have invented airplanes, hang gliders, and something as simple as kites, in the next century, people could be flying around, and they would look back to us and think, “How could they even live without flying?”.

Featured Image Credit: All About Space/Imagine Publishing


Written by Isabel Rasmussen

Isabel Rasmussen. Athlete, writer, space enthusiast and believes in aliens.

 

 

 

 

You may also like
Star Letters 006: SpaceX and NASA Trek On Toward Mars With Coastal Missions
Star Letter 013: The Modern Age of Spaceflight (to Venus?)

Leave a Reply