QUESTION:
If Titan has the frozen ingredients for life could there be away to teraform
Titan

ANSWER from Ellis Miner on October 4, 1999:
Your question about terraforming Titan is one to which I had not given
much prior thought.  Therefore, this response is more or less my "flow of
thought" and not one that I have seen addressed either by Cassini
scientists or by astrobiologists.

Titan has an abundance of nitrogen and carbon compounds, and the interior
of Titan is thought to be largely water ice (hydrogen and oxygen), so all
of the physical elements needed for life are present.  To project that fact
to a statement that "Titan has the frozen ingredients for life" may still
be an exaggeration, however.  When we talk about Titan's atmospheric and
surface conditions, our statement is that Titan may be much like Earth was
BEFORE life appeared on Earth.  While there are many "organic" compounds at
Titan (i.e., there are compounds which contain the elements C, H, O, and
N), there are actually relatively few of the compounds actually found in
living organisms on Earth.

Generally, when scientists speak of terraforming (Mars, for example), the
concept is one of making relatively small changes that would create an
environment suitable for life transplanted from Earth.  In that respect,
Titan would be very difficult to terraform.  There is little or no free
oxygen present in the atmosphere, very little sunlight that penetrates to
the surface, few if any silicate surface materials, and a surface far too
cold for liquid water to exist.  Probably the biggest single problem is the
low temperature.  In the case of Mars, relatively small changes to the
atmosphere could create a partial greenhouse effect on Mars, in part
because the temperatures at Mars are only slightly below those of Earth.
Titan, on the other hand, is a frigid 95 Kelvins, 178 degrees below the
freezing point of water, with essentially no nearby source of energy to
warm it up.  Furthermore, Titan is immersed in Saturn's radiation field for
a major portion of each orbit, and apparently does not possess a magnetic
field of its own to help keep that Saturn radiation away from Titan's
atmosphere and surface.

In short, I believe it would be a formidable task to terraform Titan.