Deep Powder Found

[photodude]

On Saturn's Moon?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...turnmoonphotos

[RR]

WME can't be far behind for this logical progression of heli-skiing.....

[pleblanc]

Uh, yeah, looking to rideshare. Will split gas or rocket fuel.

paul

[Cat in January]

"The particles are only a fraction of a millimeter in size ... even finer than talcum powder," study leader Paul Schenk, a planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, said in a statement. "This would make for the finest powder a skier could hope for."


add in low gravity and it could be a real trip

[benwhiteskis]

you'd need absolutely massive skis to ski that. The average snowflake size is about 10mm in diameter. If the ones mentioned are .1mm in diameter, that's a 100x increase in powderiness, and if a simple proportion is set up for ski width vs. snowflake size, that means that you'd need about a 11500mm wide waisted ski. Granted, it's not necessarily a proportional scale of ski width to flake diameter, so maybe only halfish of that. I don't know enough physics to determine how the space-flakes would crush down under certain amounts of weight distributed over a given area. By the way, those skis would be about 35 feet wide at the waist. The next, and probably more important question is if there are any lines steep enough to ski. Is skiing flat powder fun? No. Also, avalanche assessments must be taken on the lines steep enough to ski. Let's get going on sending a team of all of us up there.

[stukinPa]

http://www.sunsetroyale.com/blog/?p=148

NASA simulator. bikini optional. LOL
less volume between flakes = more density?

[gpetrics]

awesome link! Thanks!!

[Moops]

Originally Posted by benwhiteskis

you'd need absolutely massive skis to ski that. The average snowflake size is about 10mm in diameter. If the ones mentioned are .1mm in diameter, that's a 100x increase in powderiness, and if a simple proportion is set up for ski width vs. snowflake size, that means that you'd need about a 11500mm wide waisted ski. Granted, it's not necessarily a proportional scale of ski width to flake diameter, so maybe only halfish of that. I don't know enough physics to determine how the space-flakes would crush down under certain amounts of weight distributed over a given area. By the way, those skis would be about 35 feet wide at the waist. The next, and probably more important question is if there are any lines steep enough to ski. Is skiing flat powder fun? No. Also, avalanche assessments must be taken on the lines steep enough to ski. Let's get going on sending a team of all of us up there.

Don't forget to figure in that Saturn's gravity is roughly 90% of the gravity on Earth...so we would "float" better...maybe we'd only need skis 33' wide...this is good...I don't think my knees could handle 35' wide skis.

[benwhiteskis]

Originally Posted by Moops

Don't forget to figure in that Saturn's gravity is roughly 90% of the gravity on Earth...so we would "float" better...maybe we'd only need skis 33' wide...this is good...I don't think my knees could handle 35' wide skis.

So wouldn't that mean that the snow is packed down to only 90% of what it would be on earth? I feel like gravity cancels out somewhere in the equation of how wide the skis need to be, but it would also mean that we only go 90% as fast as we would here on earth. Personally, I'd like something that's 190% more gravity as earth, because then you can go 190% faster. That would also mean that there is a thicker atmosphere, which means more oxygen at altitude. Also more air resistance... I think my nerd is showing

[Cat in January]

Gravity will be weigh less than on Earth

[benwhiteskis]

oops, I misread the 90% post. I looked it up myself, and it's 90% less, or rather, 10% of earth's gravity, etc. That makes things even harder on the way down. We'd not be moving very quickly

[benwhiteskis]

That means that 10x more vert is required to get going the same speed as you would on earth, and therefore 10x more time. It would be very, very relaxing, but not terribly thrilling. Do we ski to relax, or ski to be thrilled, or is being thrilled relaxing to us?