[REQUEST] Fly into gas giants

[melvinius]

One of the mysteries of our time is just what exists inside a gas giant. Could there be entire ecosystems, floating islands of rock, even a rocky core at the very center? Why not?

 

Some of the more interesting science fiction short stories I've read involve exploring gas giants. You'd need a special pressure ship to do so and visibility would be very bad. But there could be pockets or bubbles of clearspace with who knows what inside.

[DeckardKain]

It's not a mystery at all. Decades of scientific investigation and space missions have equipped us with a robust understanding of gas giants, distinctly demarcating scientific facts from science fiction.

Informed Exploration: Space missions, including Voyager, Galileo, and Juno, have provided us with profound insights into gas giants, especially Jupiter. We're not navigating through conjectures; we're rooted firmly in comprehensive scientific data.

Crushing Pressures: The notion of "pockets or bubbles of clear space" runs counter to our knowledge of gas giants' internal structures. Before even reaching the depths where metallic hydrogen dominates, any probe—and certainly a "pressure ship"—would face pressures so immense that destruction is a certainty.

Turbulent Environment: Far from being placid globes, these planets are turbulent cauldrons, hosting storms with lightning strikes far more potent than any on Earth. They are anything but calm landscapes for exploration.

Gravity's Grip: The colossal gravitational forces these planets exert, with Jupiter's surpassing Earth's by over 24 times, make any form of maneuverability nearly impossible.

Absent Solid Ground: Gas giants preclude the possibility of a solid landing. It's a perpetual journey downward, where conditions become progressively more hostile, without any solid platform in sight.

Radiation Levels: The intense radiation fields around planets like Jupiter would devastate most electronic equipment, further complicating any hypothetical mission into its depths.

Life and Gas Giants: The intriguing idea of ecosystems or floating islands within gas giants is rendered implausible by their very nature. The overwhelming gravity and pressure would pulverize anything that isn't gaseous.

In conclusion, while delving into a gas giant may serve as an exhilarating backdrop for science fiction, it stands in stark contrast to our current scientific knowledge.

[FALCmods4all]

Since this already exists in one mission, it might as well be expanded on.

 

Space station that uses antigrav to remain floating near the top of a gas giant atmosphere.

 

Organisms of mostly gas and paper thin structures could perhaps evolve.

[FALCmods4all]

Some encyclopedia Brittanica info on Saturn: Saturn troposphere temperature is 135 K (−217 °F, −138 °C) at a pressure of 1 bar. [] The base of the ammonia cloud deck is predicted to occur at a depth corresponding to about 1.7 bars, where the ammonia crystals dissolve into the hydrogen gas and disappear abruptly.

 

So it seems to me the way to implement more gas giant locations would be:

 

Anti grav platform

Low orbit ship with thrust to counteract atmosphere drag

Space elevator with heavy anchor in orbit matching wind

Biological mass that has stages of life at different depths

Hot air balloon/zeplin w/hotter helium than cloud layer

 

So in terms of scene design for mods, think of the thick cloud layer as a gas ocean you will not float in without a balloon and then troposphere to stratosphere as poisonous but otherwise survivable sky zone.

 

Just note that once we go deeper than gas giants thick cloud layer we likely quickly descend into high pressure, temperature, gravity, etc. So a vessel designed for high pressure rather than a space ship designed for low pressure would be needed to explore deeper. Probably no optical visibility so x rays, infra red or something needed. Maybe Ill look at the data for Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus too.

Edited October 18, 2023 by FALCmods4all