From: Doug Jones (random@qnet.com)
Date: Mon Apr 17 2000 - 12:05:17 MDT
Stirling Westrup wrote:
>
> Spike Jones wrote:
>
> > > EvMick@aol.com wrote: > Hot hydrogen or a vacumn?
> > >
> > > Stirling Westrup wrote:
> > > Then again, by the time the weight of the displaced air was close that of
> > > your bathysphere, we're talking holding out some SERIOUS pressure. It
> > > looks like you'd want a diamondoid sheath in order to be practical at
> > > all.
> >
> > Why all that? Just take some hydrogen down with you below the
> > hydrogen layer and match the hydrogen pressure in the baloon with the
> > pressure of the heavier gas you are displacing. Engineering-wise, the
> > problem is not all that different from building a blimp on this planet.
>
> Except that on this planet you don't worry about the atmosphere leaking
> in. In fact, you don't worry about too many life support issues. Putting
> an entire enclosed life-support system on a blimp would be infeasible. I
> think you would need something as large as the Hindenburg or bigger. Even
> then, the Hindenburg was mostly empty space. By the time you've got all
> the equipment you want to take to Jupiter onboard, you are looking at a
> LOT of tonnage to support.
Without some mighty heroic (ie nano) tech, a visit to the clouds of
Jupiter would be one-way. The delta-V to climb to low jovian orbit is in
excess of 30 km/s. As the navy bubblehead[1] who transferred into
aviation noted, what goes up must come down, but the inverse is not
necessarily true...
This would combine most of the worst elements of skydiving, mixed-gas
scuba diving, submarining, rocketry, and blimps. The failure modes and
effects analysis would be daunting, to put it mildly.
[1] Submarine crewman
-- Doug Jones Rocket Plumber, XCOR Aerospace http://www.xcor-aerospace.com
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