One: gravity pulls you in. You die in a flaming fireball just due to the speed you gain entering the gravity well. Like, your kinetic energy is so high that the impact of you (or your spacecraft) into the atmosphere is a small nuke. Every kilo of your ass blows up as though it is several kilos of TNT.
Well, okay, let’s say you engineer something to brake with - like the largest rocket every conceived (and you brought it with you), or a really clever aerobraking rig. And you enter the upper atmosphere.
Well, it’s just “air”, mostly hydrogen and some helium, but also some smaller amounts of stuff like water, methane, nitrogen, sulphuric acid… Fluffy clouds of stuff. If you have an energy source, you could probably find a way to generate lift and stay alive near one atmosphere of pressure, circling around in the clouds. Avoid the storms, the lightning, and (depending on the gas giant) bring a good heater.
Hard to create a blimp on a gas giant. It works on earth due to the density differences between hydrogen/helium and the air. Guess what the air is made from on a gas giant. So active lift is required. Motors, fans, wings, etc. Hopefully you have a nuclear power source or something cause eventually you’ll run out of energy and drop.
Then, well, you probably drop slowly. Terminal velocity will be a thing, but the atmosphere gets thicker as you go down. You’ll get crushed before anything gets terribly interesting, chemically speaking. You won’t see the diamond rain, or the metallic hydrogen core. Too bad. I hear it’s lovely.
The atmospheric temperature of Jupiter varies, but is well below zero degrees, Celsius or Fahrenheit. This means you could make a habitable shelter using neutral buoyancy to keep it in the desirable pressure ranges simply by keeping it at room temperature. You could even do the hot air balloon technique and have a large balloon heated to possibly above room temperature to allow for a larger habitat with stronger materials, so long as the net density is about one atmosphere.
None of this solves the question of how you power it, or do that orbital insertion in the first place, but Dr. Robert Forward discusses the mechanics of a similar idea in his novel Saturn Rukh.
As a huge sci fi fan, thanks for the rec. Have never read Forward.
Yeah, I love to say: if you assume unlimited free energy, then… all sorts of cool things suddenly become realistic. But we also probably just boil the planet to a cinder (unlimited energy becomes unlimited waste heat) due to short sighted greed instead. Cause things like Bitcoin make no fucking sense on the scale of civilization, and yet how much energy do we spend on it?
With unlimited energy someone will be like: damn, I could make a fortune harvesting all the atmospheric nitrogen and hoarding it and selling it back to the world so they can be 3% nitrogen by mass. Or some shit.
Thank you for giving an answer beyond “you die”. Presumably, anyone trying to “land” on a gas giant would be aware of the risks and challenges, and be well prepared. I’m pretty sure that’s what OP had in mind.
You would eventually get crushed by the pressure without ever having landed on anything.
So basically my current career
Oceangate! In SPAAAAAAAAACE!
At least the Logitech controller has been tried and tested in plenty of space sims.
Bet they’d up it to a turtle beach for a project that large. Carbon fiber stays though.
pain. regret. and then the peaceful void of non-existance.
The pressure on a gas giant is pretty enormous, and the temperatures are likewise pretty high. We have sent probes into Jupiter and they have been crushed and burned up on entry.
I did some leisure research a few days ago to conclude Jupiters core would make a great covert alien base.
It was inspired by the science meme of everything other than helium being a metal. Basically harnessing (star)fusion with hydrogen and helium can form every other known element. They are all the “stuff” you need to form everything else that exists.
Jupiters atmosphere is almost entirely hydrogen and helium its a perfect setup for a sufficiently advanced species to be used in star trek like replicators establishing a self sustainable habitat within Jupiters core.
The atmosphere also makes it incredible difficult for us to find or detect said habitat.
Kevin J Anderson wrote 2 series on just this premise!
What are the series?
Saga of the seven Suns
the neat part about how this kills you is you don’t just die, you turn into interesting examples of physics!
My high school teachers will be so proud
