Gas giants are more like the Sun than the Earth. You cannot really stand on them for instance as they don’t really have a terrain in which to do so. They are primarily gaseous, which is why they are called gas giants.
Also, having a floating city on a gas giant makes no sense either. It’s similar to suggesting that a star could have a floating city hovering directly above its atmosphere. That’s not possible IRL, and it’s confusing for a science-fiction video game to have that kind of element while striving for realism.
Overall, I feel more confused by the idea that people think this makes sense than to yell “confidently incorrect”. Interesting though.
They are more like the sun than the earth, but they also do have solid cores. It’s just that the solid core is under a layer of metallic hydrogen, which is under a layer of liquid hydrogen (not liquid because it’s cold, liquid because it’s under high pressure).
They’re actually not primarily gaseous, they’re just made mostly of elements that would be gases on Earth at typical surface temperatures and pressures. Metallic hydrogen isn’t a gas, and it’s the bulk of Jupiter.
A floating something on a gas giant does make sense. You obviously wouldn’t float “above” the atmosphere – there’s nothing to float on above the atmosphere, that’s where space stations would be. Instead you’d float inside the atmosphere. Depending on what depth you “floated” at, it it would be more like a submarine than an air balloon though.
In the range of atmospheric pressures that seem reasonable to deal with (say 0.1 atmospheres to 10 atmospheres) the temperature of Jupiter is about 200K, slightly colder than the south pole. At higher altitudes it’s hotter than that, but the atmosphere is really thin. But, since the planet is a “failed star”, there’s no nuclear fusion going on, so nothing other than solar radiation (and a tiny bit of convection from the depths) to heat it up.
It seems like the biggest difficulties with setting up a gas giant city would be the “weather” and the gravity. Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is known for its violent storms. Storms so violent that they make record-setting hurricanes seem like a breeze. Maybe there’s a safe space to put a city where it wouldn’t be affected by the storms? Who knows. Maybe the center of the great red spot is calm, like the eye of a hurricane on Earth. And since storms last centuries, it would be a relatively stable place to build.
Gravity would be the other issue. At the cloud tops, gravity is 2.5x Earth’s gravity. People could withstand that for minutes, maybe hours, but not for days or weeks, let alone years. Plus, all that gravity means it’s much, much harder to get out of the planet’s gravity well. With sci-fi thrusters and warp drives or whatever, maybe getting out of a planet’s atmosphere is no longer a big deal, but with our current real-world technology, getting into Jupiter’s atmosphere is easy. Getting back out would be much harder.
Well, gravity in a gas giant means if you’re floating, your vessel will be under pressure scaled to the gravity factor. This means you’ll weigh multiples of what you do in Earth’s gravity well- and it means your floating vessel would have to be able to withstand atmospheric pressure scaled accordingly.
If your floating city is an airship, it couldn’t very well be pressurized; it would have to equalize pressure to that of the atmosphere or else be crushed. That would in turn require spectacular engineering to make life support feasible; you’d have to breathe a gas mix that avoids the toxic effects of breathing pressurized air and that’s all in addition to that the pressure:temperature curves involved probably make your floating elevation into a very hot place.
There’s some pretty interesting ideas for floating cities on Venus. There’s a part of the atmosphere that’s both the right temperature and pressure to make it work.
it’s confusing for a science-fiction video game to have that kind of element while striving for realism.
There is nothing realistic about this game. It is not striving for realism. What is the real life basis for faster than light travel? There is none.
This is one opinion about fiction vs another. The OP is not wrong for wanting a fictional universe where he can fly to a floating city on a gas planet. It’s fiction. And it’s just as valid as your version of fiction.
Because the game itself tries to follow science as closely as possible, and gets an exception only when strictly necessary (no faster than light travel -> no game). There is a difference between Interstellar type of settings and Star wars ones
Spacial distortion! A physicist once proposed that by the laws of physics there is nothing preventing faster than light teavelling but what needs to happen is that space itself need to distort and push the objects forward.
Now we only need to discover a way to harvest negative energy.
Gas giants are more like the Sun than the Earth. You cannot really stand on them for instance as they don’t really have a terrain in which to do so. They are primarily gaseous, which is why they are called gas giants.
Also, having a floating city on a gas giant makes no sense either. It’s similar to suggesting that a star could have a floating city hovering directly above its atmosphere. That’s not possible IRL, and it’s confusing for a science-fiction video game to have that kind of element while striving for realism.
Overall, I feel more confused by the idea that people think this makes sense than to yell “confidently incorrect”. Interesting though.
They are more like the sun than the earth, but they also do have solid cores. It’s just that the solid core is under a layer of metallic hydrogen, which is under a layer of liquid hydrogen (not liquid because it’s cold, liquid because it’s under high pressure).
They’re actually not primarily gaseous, they’re just made mostly of elements that would be gases on Earth at typical surface temperatures and pressures. Metallic hydrogen isn’t a gas, and it’s the bulk of Jupiter.
A floating something on a gas giant does make sense. You obviously wouldn’t float “above” the atmosphere – there’s nothing to float on above the atmosphere, that’s where space stations would be. Instead you’d float inside the atmosphere. Depending on what depth you “floated” at, it it would be more like a submarine than an air balloon though.
In the range of atmospheric pressures that seem reasonable to deal with (say 0.1 atmospheres to 10 atmospheres) the temperature of Jupiter is about 200K, slightly colder than the south pole. At higher altitudes it’s hotter than that, but the atmosphere is really thin. But, since the planet is a “failed star”, there’s no nuclear fusion going on, so nothing other than solar radiation (and a tiny bit of convection from the depths) to heat it up.
It seems like the biggest difficulties with setting up a gas giant city would be the “weather” and the gravity. Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is known for its violent storms. Storms so violent that they make record-setting hurricanes seem like a breeze. Maybe there’s a safe space to put a city where it wouldn’t be affected by the storms? Who knows. Maybe the center of the great red spot is calm, like the eye of a hurricane on Earth. And since storms last centuries, it would be a relatively stable place to build.
Gravity would be the other issue. At the cloud tops, gravity is 2.5x Earth’s gravity. People could withstand that for minutes, maybe hours, but not for days or weeks, let alone years. Plus, all that gravity means it’s much, much harder to get out of the planet’s gravity well. With sci-fi thrusters and warp drives or whatever, maybe getting out of a planet’s atmosphere is no longer a big deal, but with our current real-world technology, getting into Jupiter’s atmosphere is easy. Getting back out would be much harder.
This would be a great fantasy writing setting… a city floating on the Great Red Spot…
Where everyone is absolutely jacked because of the increased gravity…
Why wouldn’t a city floating in a gas giant’s atmosphere work? Wouldn’t it basically just be living in a giant zeplin?
Well, gravity in a gas giant means if you’re floating, your vessel will be under pressure scaled to the gravity factor. This means you’ll weigh multiples of what you do in Earth’s gravity well- and it means your floating vessel would have to be able to withstand atmospheric pressure scaled accordingly.
If your floating city is an airship, it couldn’t very well be pressurized; it would have to equalize pressure to that of the atmosphere or else be crushed. That would in turn require spectacular engineering to make life support feasible; you’d have to breathe a gas mix that avoids the toxic effects of breathing pressurized air and that’s all in addition to that the pressure:temperature curves involved probably make your floating elevation into a very hot place.
Pfft tell that to the CEO of Oceangate who wants to have floating cities on Saturn
Thought that was Venus
You’re probably right, I didn’t fact check.
Like others have said it is an interesting plan but not one id trust a billionaire with
That’s ok, neither did the CEO of Oceangate.
Hehehehe
There’s some pretty interesting ideas for floating cities on Venus. There’s a part of the atmosphere that’s both the right temperature and pressure to make it work.
Hopefully I’ll be able to find one in a few hours
There is nothing realistic about this game. It is not striving for realism. What is the real life basis for faster than light travel? There is none.
This is one opinion about fiction vs another. The OP is not wrong for wanting a fictional universe where he can fly to a floating city on a gas planet. It’s fiction. And it’s just as valid as your version of fiction.
Because the game itself tries to follow science as closely as possible, and gets an exception only when strictly necessary (no faster than light travel -> no game). There is a difference between Interstellar type of settings and Star wars ones
Spacial distortion! A physicist once proposed that by the laws of physics there is nothing preventing faster than light teavelling but what needs to happen is that space itself need to distort and push the objects forward.
Now we only need to discover a way to harvest negative energy.