Let me put it another way (than my prior
Jupiter-esque question):
1) What is a reasonable guess of core radius and edge of atmosphere radius (if
we assume 140K km for Jupiter, 7" to edge of atmosphere.... but how much is
core?).
2) What is the surface gravity of Jupiter guessed to be?
3) Would there be any combat possible in the atmosphere or would sensors and
such effectively be blind? Would beams be diffused so much as to make them
useless? Torpedos?
K-guns? SMRs? Fighters? How would the gas
giant atmosphere (and any gravity issues) affect them? Thoughts?
Tomb.
PS - B2B --> No, there will be no obelisks. Hal
says so.
> Let me put it another way (than my prior
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/galileo/Galileo-QA/new/Jupiter_s_surface.txt
"We are not even sure if Jupiter has a _solid_ core or
not. If it does, its radius is estimated to be only about 7000 km while the
equatorial radius of the planet's entire envelope of atmospheric gas is about
71,400 km (compared to 6,000 km for the Earth). This is the
radius out to the top of the atmosphere to the one-bar atmospheric
pressure level, i.e, the "altitude" above the center of Jupiter where the
pressure is the same as that usually encountered at the Earth's surface. So
you would have to dive down about 60,000 km into the planet before getting to
a solid surface"
> 2) What is the surface gravity of Jupiter guessed
If we take earth's mass and radius as 1 unit then we can plug 318 units for
Jupiter's mass and 11.3 units for its radius into the gravity proportion.
Squaring the radius and dividing into the mass we
find how much stronger Jupiter's surface gravity is than earth's--ie
about 2.5 Earth at the cloud tops.
When you're on Earth's surface, almost all the mass is under you--the
atmosophere doesn't count for very much--so you can treat the gravity
as coming from the center of mass. However, with Jupiter, when you get to the
hypothetical solid surface, as lot of the mass will be above you. The gravity
might not be as much as you'd expect. Of course, the air pressure will crush
you flat...From the same site cited above: "The Galileo probe that landed in
Jupiter's atmosphere last December [96] made measurements only within the
upper 150 km or so of the atmosphere before it melted in the extreme heat and
pressure"
> 3) Would there be any combat possible in the
The difference in environments might be analogous to the difference between
aerial and submarine. My future history of Alarish includes a battle in which
AE ships hid in the outer atmosphere of a jovian, then ambushed the invading
PAU, but I don't think there's be any combat there. And you'd want a
streamlined ship.
> At 5:38 AM -0500 2/2/02, Thomas Barclay wrote:
The real question is how much is dense gas. I have to speculate that
the gas/space boundary on jupiter is much more discreet given his
gravity well. Far less gas would be escaping due to its atomic vibration
velocity not being high enough.
> 2) What is the surface gravity of Jupiter guessed
Hundreds and hundreds of Gees.
Jupiter has enough of a gravity well that many scientist are reasonably sure
that at the lower altitudes Hydrogen and Helium are metallic liquids rather
than light and aiery gasses.
> 3) Would there be any combat possible in the
I'd think it'd be like figters asking if they could fight while flying at tree
top height. Most of their time would be spent not smacking into the ground. Or
in this case the more solid gas. As his gravity well is so much heavier, the
amount of thrust required to not crash if you weren't in orbit would be far
higher. Something on the
order of Thrust 5-6 in order to climb out.
> >2) What is the surface gravity of Jupiter guessed
Ryan replied:
> Hundreds and hundreds of Gees.
Well, no, not exactly. Jupiter's radius (to cloud tops) is 11 Earth
radii, mass is 318 Earth masses. Gravity in gees is m/r^2. Assuming
that 100% of the mass were at the center (which it isn't, of course), at
radius R the gravity is G:
R G
1 318.0
2 79.5
3 35.3
4 19.9
5 12.7
6 8.8
7 6.5
8 5.0
9 3.9
10 3.2
11 2.6
Actual figures towards the center should be lower because much of the mass is
above you. However...that mass above you is pushing down on you, and the air
pressure will squash you flat *well* before it forces
the hydrogen into a metallic state. Assuming the jovian storms don't
first toss you around enough to make you go home. If you want to know how to
calculate the air pressure, look around
page 74-76 of Stephen Gillett's book _World_Building_, which is a