Quote Originally Posted by Wraith View Post
Enceladus has much more tidal heating than Ganymede does because of it's eccentric orbit. A steel liner won't stop ice from building up inside of it, even assuming you can find a place where the ice is motionless enough not to rip it apart.
While acknowledging we're both completely talking out of our ass, do you really think the ice crust is moving around that much? Yeah, the surfaces of these moons are 'young,' by crater counts, but not that young. Are you assuming it's flowing like a glacier on Earth? Lacking any information to point one way or the other, my starting assumption was the crust would be relatively stable, like the crust of Earth. If not, that would be a show stopper for sure.

But as for heating the tube, whatever it's made of, the energy to do it would be just a fraction of what a controlled geyser would generate. I think the engineering to keep it open isn't complicated so long as the crust is relatively stable. Consider that venting the water is also venting the interior heat. Again, I think the biggest issue would be keeping it under control - it might even expand, cause a crack, etc.

Interesting side note, have you seen the pics of Ceres? There's some talk there could be a liquid layer there too, which sort of upends the tidal heating explanation for the big planet moons. What in the world would be heating the interior of Ceres, given it's size??? Assumptions have been that internal heat like that within Earth is driven by radioactive decay and that smaller bodies should be cooled by now. Ceres is really small.