Jool Easter Egg Landing/launch pad

[molecule9]

I think the prospect of landing on Jool would stand out in the community. There could be an entire KSC, or one like that other KSC Easter egg on kerbin. A different arrangement would be nice. 

[nascarlaser1]

how would it work?? Jool is a gas giant... there is no land for the new KSC to sit on, so it would just float, which defies the law of physics... kinda .

[George van Doorn]

Cloud cities FTW!

 

[p1t1o]

Imagine an airstrip and landing pad, suspended in Jool atmosphere by balloons (the balloons could be underneath).

This would give a small target for the landing of various craft, making for an interesting challenge.

For extra points - make the altitude adjustable for increased/decreased challenge.

Floaty balloons already have precedent in a mod, and a floating gas-giant station is within the bounds of known science.

[septemberWaves]

On 2/14/2017 at 11:59 AM, p1t1o said:

a floating gas-giant station is within the bounds of known science

It really isn't. Jool isn't a great representation of a gas giant because KSP doesn't model wind, but real gas giants have ridiculously fast wind speeds. A floating station might be plausible in between the major storm bands where it's calmer, but it would be in a very precarious position and would probably be constantly at risk of drifting into the stormier parts of the atmosphere.

[p1t1o]

3 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

It really isn't. Jool isn't a great representation of a gas giant because KSP doesn't model wind, but real gas giants have ridiculously fast wind speeds. A floating station might be plausible in between the major storm bands where it's calmer, but it would be in a very precarious position and would probably be constantly at risk of drifting into the stormier parts of the atmosphere.

No? Wind speed is only a problem if you suddenly encounter winds going another direction. Are storms really that close together in all regions?

Anyhoo, perhaps IRL its not so possible, but I dont see it being out of place in a kerbal universe. Plus interesting challenge yadda yadda...

[septemberWaves]

8 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Are storms really that close together in all regions?

Not all, no. Most of the strongest storms on gas planets are at the edges of the various different airstreams, which are usually fairly easy to distinguish because they often end up causing the planet to become striped (most noticeable on Jupiter). The major concerns would be:

1) It would be difficult to keep a floating platform away from the turbulent edges of the airstream constantly. Gas planets are huge and the airstreams are quite wide, but any rogue air current might push it in the wrong direction too quickly for its propulsion systems to recover.

2) The storms of gas planets are very unpredictable, and made harder to predict by the fact that we can only see what's going on at the surface. Even if the location of a floating platform looks fairly safe there's no guarantee that it is, even for a short amount of time. It could quite possibly be dragged into a stormy sub-layer of clouds, or be pushed towards the storms at the edge of an airstream, without any prior indication of the threat.

[p1t1o]

1 hour ago, eloquentJane said:

Not all, no. Most of the strongest storms on gas planets are at the edges of the various different airstreams, which are usually fairly easy to distinguish because they often end up causing the planet to become striped (most noticeable on Jupiter). The major concerns would be:

1) It would be difficult to keep a floating platform away from the turbulent edges of the airstream constantly. Gas planets are huge and the airstreams are quite wide, but any rogue air current might push it in the wrong direction too quickly for its propulsion systems to recover.

2) The storms of gas planets are very unpredictable, and made harder to predict by the fact that we can only see what's going on at the surface. Even if the location of a floating platform looks fairly safe there's no guarantee that it is, even for a short amount of time. It could quite possibly be dragged into a stormy sub-layer of clouds, or be pushed towards the storms at the edge of an airstream, without any prior indication of the threat.

Interesting stuff.

What if, and Im just spitballin, you chose a denser altitude (say, 5-10 atmospheres depth) where your dirigible could be more robustly built. The whole thing could be rigid and aerodynamic and made to survive being blown about in 200m/s winds. Being in a dense layer means your buoyancyenvelope doesn't have to be nearly as large, thus it can be more durable.

Clearly Im at my limits of knowledge of Jovian-type atmosphere but if I imagine a buoyant station that is a rigid sphere, its hard to imagine a wind environment (in the 1-200m/s range) that could cause much damage.

Obviously landing a capsule in such winds IRL would be difficult/impossibe, but I wouldn't mind being able to try in KSP.

The other alternative idea, which sounds harder to me though, is having the station at an ultra-high altitude where the density is such that even very fast winds dont carry much energy.

[Wjolcz]

Pretty cool idea for a mod or an easter egg. And I mean the sky city concept.

Edited February 16, 2017 by Veeltch

[The_Rocketeer]

51 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

What if, and Im just spitballin, you chose a denser altitude (say, 5-10 atmospheres depth) where your dirigible could be more robustly built. The whole thing could be rigid and aerodynamic and made to survive being blown about in 200m/s winds. Being in a dense layer means your buoyancyenvelope doesn't have to be nearly as large, thus it can be more durable.

***SPOILERS ALERT*** (highlight to read)

You remember how the dust storm at the beginning of The Martian wouldn't work because the air is so thin that the force of the wind is tiny, so it couldn't ever tip the MAV? In your scenario you have the reverse problem. At 5-10 atmospheres of pressure, the force of a 200m/s wind is multiplied by the multiples of pressure. So, wind force equivalent to 1 or 2 KILOMETERS per second. And that's just the main current. As soon as you reach a less settled region, with winds that gust and back, you could experience forces up to nearly twice as high (when wind going 200m/s this way meets wind going 200m/s the other way).

A little oversimplified, but you get the gist

 

[p1t1o]

20 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

***SPOILERS ALERT*** (highlight to read)

You remember how the dust storm at the beginning of The Martian wouldn't work because the air is so thin that the force of the wind is tiny, so it couldn't ever tip the MAV? In your scenario you have the reverse problem. At 5-10 atmospheres of pressure, the force of a 200m/s wind is multiplied by the multiples of pressure. So, wind force equivalent to 1 or 2 KILOMETERS per second. And that's just the main current. As soon as you reach a less settled region, with winds that gust and back, you could experience forces up to nearly twice as high (when wind going 200m/s this way meets wind going 200m/s the other way).

A little oversimplified, but you get the gist

 

Force is dependant on density, not pressure. 5 atm of Hydrogen blowing at 1km/s will exert less force than 5 atm of Earth-air blowing at 1km/s. (I know its not necessarily hydrogen, just an example)

But anyway, the dirigible at this depth would be closer to a submarine than a blimp, with associated tolerances to force.

There is a lot of mention of large forces, but things have been made to withstand large forces before.

We ARE talking about a station on another planet, are we sure this isn't technologically feasible? Im not saying we could build it *today*. In terms of KSP, we also dont have the technology to send giant, pre-built space station to the edge of the system to be hard-landed, already fully manned AND with attached SSTO spaceplane!

I suppose the main weakness here is lack of fine-grained knowledge about gas giant atmospheres.

I recognise that this would be a great engineering challenge but have yet to hear a hard and fast reason why it would be impossible, at least compared to the many impossible things we already have in KSP.

"The winds are too fast" doesn't quite rule it out (although of course, they are the major challenge).

"Due to the physical strength of materials and the limits of fluid bouyancy, there are no materials strong enough to resist predicted wind forces, that are light enough to be made to float with any known mechanism, even taking into account the many different combinations of Indicated Airspeed, density and pressure that are found in gas giants." Would be a great reason to rule it out, but Im guessing that figuring out whether or not that statement was true would be non-trivial.

***

Just to head off any confusion on the topic, there are 2 questions:

Is a bouyant station possible on a gas giant?

and:

Is a bouyant station possible enough to have in KSP?

Edited February 16, 2017 by p1t1o
Sense and accuracy.

[The_Rocketeer]

Density = mass per volume.
Pressure = force per area.

It's pressure that's the problem here.

[p1t1o]

45 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Density = mass per volume.
Pressure = force per area.

It's pressure that's the problem here.

Yes, the dynamic pressure of wind against the vessel, which is dependent on the density of the fluid. Whether the fluid is at 1 atm or 5 atm, makes little difference at constant density.

It was the low density of the martian atmosphere that would have prevented the MAV falling over, the [static] pressure could have been 10atm, but if the density was still the same (say if the atmosphere was very hot) the force exerted on the MAV would still be low.

Force is dependant on proportional to density, not pressure.

Thats a bit better. Force does depend on pressure but is not necessarily proportional to it.

Edited February 16, 2017 by p1t1o