Mars has CO2 in the thin atmosphere and oxygen in the minerals also. For Titan there is just the oxygen in the water which certainly looks more abundant on Titan than on Mars. Get oxygen from Enceladus?
Hmmm… those toxic perchlorates on Mars are also used in making rocket fuel - oxidizer in solid rocket fuel. You can make methane on mars but not as an energy source I think.
And those lakes and rivers on titan are ethane and methane not gasoline – good as cryogenic rocket fuels used with liquid oxygen as your oxidizer.
No I would be looking for nuclear fuels on both mars and titan, though cooling looks more difficult on Mars. Sure it is cold on mars but you still need a coolant.
NASA is working on materials for spaceship hulls that are based on plastics; they started with HDPE as I recall. Their current version is stronger than aluminum by weight and a lot better at blocking radiation.
Isaac Arthur posted this video: “why we should go to Mars and why we shouldn’t” - which explores that with a bit more nuance (though without any mention of Titan). It contains a bit more discussion of technical difficulty. But even in Arthur’s case, I still can’t help but notice the difference of approaches to all this between the artists/dreamers and the engineers. The former are the enthusiasts basking in the “why not?!” of everything while the latter (the people who actually have to design and build the stuff to work) are more in the category of “let me tell you why that won’t work…! - or at least not nearly so easily as you envision it.”
My kids read a science fiction series about humans who build underwater civilizations on earth when the surface became too hot with too much radiation. (I guess there is a whole genre of climate change apocalypse speculative fiction.) It seemed a little more realistic. The humans evolved in more realistic ways, like developing sonar capabilities similar to dolphins from swimming so much.
If there were such a field as “literary archaeology” that could draw conclusions about a period based on the kinds of stories they told, I’m guessing ‘climate apocalypse‘ might have it’s own signature layer! Sadly.
I’ve long said that we won’t be ready to put a human presence on Mars until our robotics is good enough to send robots that can mine, refine, and build the machines for erecting a base sufficient for a human crew to arrive, land, walk into the base, take hot showers, have dinner, watch a good movie, and head for bed – with a minimum of a five-year backup supply beyond what is needed for the mission itself.