Phocis Flexus
What Phocis Flexus is
Phocis Flexus is a flexus — a low curved ridge with a scalloped pattern — on Europa, 242 km across, centred at 44.5° S, 161.6° E. It is the 67th largest named feature on Europa and the 5th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Where the cow lead Cadmus before it stopped at the site of Thebes. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1985, under the theme it applies to every flexus on Europa.
What it would take to settle Phocis Flexus
Europa scores 60.9 as a world. That number is the same for every square metre of it — but sunlight, water, radiation and the ground under your feet are not. This is the same question asked at 44.5° S, 161.6° E.
What this spot has going for it is water — same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is temperature — about -163 °C mean at this latitude.
Computed from Phocis Flexus's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Europa (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Europa and are already counted in the world's own index, not again here.
What this cannot see: elevation. Slope, local shadowing and the polar “peaks of eternal light” — ridge tops near the poles of a barely tilted world that catch sun almost continuously while a crater floor kilometres away never does — need a terrain model this does not have. Where a real mission targets a pole, that is usually why.