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Kraken Shore map: a settlement on Titan

A small settlement on the shore of Kraken Mare, Titan's largest sea, at 75.5° N, 76.9° E. Every building, pipe and distance on these maps comes from the same layout file the simulation is built from.

The site

The campus stands on a plateau 15 m above the sea. The Garden Hall is 290 m from the shore; a jetty runs out to a moored barge, and the launch pad for the ascent vehicle sits 530 m east, far enough that a launch accident cannot reach a home. The coastline is the one Cassini's radar measured; the slope and beach between plateau and sea are reconstructed, because the radar mosaic resolves the shore and not the rise.

Site plan. The sea is at the top (bearing 331°). Rings: the launch pad's blast keep-outs (480 m to homes, 288 m to work buildings). Wedges: what the gallery windows and the views see. Select a camera pin for its view.

The campus

Homes, the Garden Hall and the workshops sit together and are joined by a heated, insulated spine, so no one walks outside to reach them. The hazards are kept apart by rules the layout is checked against: the reactors, the hydrocarbon plant, the oxygen store and the pad each have their distances.

Campus plan, sea at the top. Rounded outlines are separation zones around the reactor yard and the hydrocarbon plant. The dotted arrow is the visitor route from the rotorcraft to the gallery. Numbered pins are the inspect points in the simulation. Measured on this plan: oxygen store to hydrocarbon processing 236 m (the rule is 100); reactor yard to Wing B 72 m (60); processing to the Garden Hall 111 m (60).

From the plateau to the sea

Section through the Garden Hall toward the sea, heights stretched 5 times. The gallery looks down over the slope and beach to the jetty head (the line). The radar mosaic resolves the coastline, not this slope: the ground profile is reconstructed (basis: fiction).

The Garden Hall

The hall is the emotional centre of the settlement: a warm, planted room under a pressure vault, with a gallery that looks out over the methane sea to one side and the launch pad to the other.

The Garden Hall, 40 by 20 m and 12 m high, seaward end at the top. Blue: windows (the sea window at the top, the pad window on the east wall); gaps in the walls: the entry door (west) and the door to the heated spine (landward). Level 1: a 7 m promenade with a pool and a café between plant beds. Level 2: 3 m walkways and the observation gallery, whose windows face the sea and the launch pad.

What is drawn

Inhabited building
Working building
Unoccupied: yard, apron, pad, jetty
Hydrocarbon hazard
Oxygen hazard
Reactor
Heated spine (indoor walkway)
Power cable
Power and recovered heat
Cold hydrocarbon line
Oxygen line
Ice haul (water)
Visitor route
Pad keep-out
Separation zone
Sea
Slope and beach
Gallery window field
View (opens a still and the simulation)
Inspect point

Rules the layout is checked against

Rule	Distance	Basis
gap between footprints that are not attached (maintenance access, separate insulated foundations)	6 m	design
pad centre to inhabited buildings (K40 inhabited building distance, stretched for 1.47 bar)	480 m	design verify
pad centre to working buildings and stores (K24 public traffic route distance, stretched)	288 m	design verify
reactor yard to inhabited buildings (bermed, shielded units)	60 m	design
processing hall and hydrocarbon stores to inhabited, oxygen-rich spaces	60 m	design
oxygen storage to hydrocarbon storage and processing	100 m	design
apron edge to any building (half the V4 span plus 1 m)	10 m	design
apron edge to the processing hall and hydrocarbon stores	30 m	design
longest open-air leg of the visitor route	80 m	design

The layout check (layout:clash) fails the build if any of these is broken. "Verify" marks a number still to be confirmed against a source.

Views and inspect points

Rotorcraft approach over the sea
View
Camera 60 m above the plateau, 607 m from the Garden Hall.
Open this view in the simulation
From the overlook: jetty, barge, processing hall
View
Camera 3 m above the plateau, 54 m from the Garden Hall.
Open this view in the simulation
Gallery, seaward window
View
Camera 7 m above the plateau, 18 m from the Garden Hall.
Open this view in the simulation
Gallery, pad window (launch view)
View
Camera 7 m above the plateau, 14 m from the Garden Hall.
Open this view in the simulation
Along the promenade, toward the sea window
View, Garden Hall
Inside the Garden Hall, the warm room under the pressure vault.
Open this view in the simulation
From the observation gallery
View, Garden Hall
Inside the Garden Hall, the warm room under the pressure vault.
Open this view in the simulation
1. Air you cannot breathe
Rotorcraft apron
Titan's air is about 95% nitrogen with a few percent methane, at 1.5 times Earth's sea-level pressure and 94 K (minus 179 °C). It is about four times denser than Earth's air, so it carries sound well and makes flying easy. It is not breathable, and it is cold enough to kill an unprotected person in minutes, so everyone outside wears an insulated pressure suit.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works
2. Why people fly here
Rotorcraft apron
Dense air and low gravity (0.14 g) make hovering cheap. This 8-tonne rotorcraft hovers on about 40 kW, about a forty-first of what the same machine would need on Earth. That is why flying, not driving, is how people get around Kraken Mare. NASA's Dragonfly octocopter, planned to reach Titan in 2034, relies on the same physics.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works
3. A rocket fuelled by Titan
Launch pad
The ascent vehicle burns methane from the sea with oxygen split from water ice. At 94 K, liquid methane needs no refrigeration and liquid oxygen sits near its boiling point, so storing propellant is far simpler than on Earth. Titan's escape speed is only 2.6 km/s, less than a quarter of Earth's.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works
4. A sea of hydrocarbons
Jetty and transfer terminal
Kraken Mare is liquid hydrocarbon, mostly methane with ethane and dissolved nitrogen. Cassini's radar measured depths of about 85 m in Moray Sinus just offshore, and more than 100 m further out. Barges load the liquid here through insulated hoses and carry it along the coast.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works
5. Cold industry
Hydrocarbon processing
Methane and ethane from the sea become rocket propellant and feedstock for plastics and other organics. The processing hall stands well apart from the homes and the garden: hydrocarbons and the oxygen-rich air indoors must never meet. It stands at the west end of the town by the jetty, with the reactors and the launch pad at the far east end.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works
6. Power from fission
Reactor yard
Two small modular fission reactors supply almost all of the town's electricity and heat. Sunlight at Saturn is about 1% of Earth's, and Titan's haze blocks much of what arrives, so solar panels are not practical here. The reactors sit apart from the halls, behind a berm.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works
7. Water and air from ice
Utilities and life support
Water ice is mined, melted and split by electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen keeps the indoor air breathable; the hydrogen goes to industry and to the fusion transports as reaction mass. How much easily mined ice lies under Kraken Shore is still an open question.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works
8. Buildings that are squeezed
Residential Wing A
Outside air at 1.5 bar presses harder than the 1 bar kept inside, so Titan buildings are squeezed rather than inflated. Their vaulted shells carry the load in compression, like stone arches. Thick insulation and thermal breaks keep the cold out, and reactor heat keeps the rooms warm.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works
9. The town's living room
Garden Hall
Trees, a café and a water channel inside a 40 by 20 m vault. The plants are for people, not for food: most food grows in sealed farm modules. Lights follow a 24-hour schedule, because a Titan day lasts about 16 Earth days.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works
10. Who lives here
Residential Wing B
About 320 people live at Kraken Shore. Most work in operations and maintenance, because the industry is largely automated. Nobody yet knows what decades in 0.14 g do to the human body, so residents exercise daily and many rotate back to spin-gravity habitats every few years.
Inspect it in the simulation How it works