Titan Review article Options

[rlorenz]

This just out. Not earth-shattering, but colorful - maybe handy as an up-to-date
Titan intro

http://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/td2702/lorenz.pdf

[nprev]

Well, I was less than clear (again) in what I meant (sorry!)

Europa certainly needs & deserves attention, but frankly I'm not completely convinced that achieving major scientific objectives--confirmation of an ocean, ice thickness sounding, global high-res photographic coverage, plume search/monitoring--can't be accomplished via one or more Discovery missions in the relatively near term. We pretty much know what to look for at Europa and indeed throughout the entire Galliean satellite system. What we don't know is whether we can get to that putative ocean via any practical technology, but again that seems like something that could be determined on less than a Flagship-class level of effort. I think that the answer to that question is key for planning all future Europa exploration.

On the other hand, we've already landed on Titan; we know that we can conduct in situ exploration using reasonable evolutes of current technology, which becomes a trade-off between transit time/launch costs and science return. (Side note: this is why I still wish that there was an ongoing, organized effort by JPL or somebody to identify particularly favorable outer-planet launch opportunities). Titan is quite possibly at least as geochemically complex as Earth (with an outside chance of being more so). Therefore, to me, it seems as if there is a lot more science to be done at Titan than anywhere else in the Solar System