Nah, it's just the absence of oxygen. Liquefied methane and oxygen have been used already in rocket engines on the ground, and you may see them later in space missions. precisely because methane is natively available, or can be simply chemically produced from local resources on some planets, allowing you to use it as…

"...what would happen if we tried putting a lander on Titan?"

Do you ever get (well) away from the city?

The cost per-gallon of liquid oxygen is about that of milk.Some rockets (Saturn 5 and Falcon 9 first stages) burn a high-grade kerosene, essentially the same as jet fuel) The price of fuel is not, and never has been the reason for the high cost of spaceflight.

Technically possible but not practical, IMHO.

Hopefully they will be signatories to this treaty:

Jonny was there long ago...

I like that, but I'd go even wider in scope. Show us many other things happening in various parts of the Star Trek Universe (not just Starfleet), all of them (unless there's a very good reason to return to the situation) one-time stories. For example...

It's also a major waste of energy...and just plain harder. What you describe is likely to be an astoundingly inefficient process that you'd only use to produce something exotic and otherwise unobtainable, like antimatter (as we might do ourselves in the not very distant future, and even then, using energy that's…

Actually, Earth-based radar has given us strong indications of water ice at the poles of Mercury since 1991 or so.

'Tidally locked' simply means your rotational period becomes the same as your orbital period...which is some value greater than zero.

"For the sake of comparison, even the most massive stars don't reach temperatures much higher than 50,000 degrees."

I like kick-ass action women too, but damn...

Yes. Even 'Waterworld' ultimately broke even that way...

I'll probably go see it too, in spite of negative reviews. But it does look like it'll be one of those films I will honestly enjoy seeing in a theater once (maybe just for big-screen eye-candy and damn the plot), and not believe my money was wasted...but also probably not go out of my way to see it again, including…

@szielins: Thank you.

I can already see that we'd never be 'BFFs...'

It's primarily R&D money...and to a lesser extent, a willingness to be the first to put your payload on whatever solar-electric, nuclear electric or nuclear thermal (it's virtually certain to be one of those) system in question, rather than slower, less capable, but familiar chemical rockets...

I find it interesting (and contradictory) that some believe we should do nothing to interfere with anyone we find out there (Best example being Trek's 'Prime Directive,' derived, of course, from culture clashes in Earth history), and yet also want ETs to arrive and help us out of our problems...