Gas Giants in KSP.

[SiliconPyro]

Am I the only one that wants to make an aerostatic habitat in order to mine helium-3, instead of blowing it up? Once interstellar missions are possible, we\'re going to need some source of fuel.

You can just say, 'Cloud City.' It\'s what everyone\'s thinking. And no, you\'re not the only one. If I could, I would relocate my entire operation to a planet like Saturn or at least one of its muns. Plentiful fuel plus lots of hydrocarbons and water ice (if we\'re talking Titan) and Helium-3 from the gas giant.. Sounds too good to be true.

[karolus10]

Gas giants could be very challenging, because they had in general a lot of moons (even planet-sized) and asteroids. For example, Jupiter had 66 moons and 4 of them are larger than our moon, rest is more like ksp minmus or smaller

Same planet itself is less interesting - u can\'t land on it and it\'s a death-trap for everyone who enter too close 8).

Below, planet\'s and largest moons comparison from planetary society web-page (large).

[Phoenix Aerospace]

You can just say, 'Cloud City.' It\'s what everyone\'s thinking. And no, you\'re not the only one. If I could, I would relocate my entire operation to a planet like Saturn or at least one of its muns. Plentiful fuel plus lots of hydrocarbons and water ice (if we\'re talking Titan) and Helium-3 from the gas giant.. Sounds too good to be true.

Remember, this is the universe we\'re talking about. It stopped making sense 14.6 billion years ago.

[SiliconPyro]

Remember, this is the universe we\'re talking about. It stopped making sense 14.6 billion years ago.

If you really think about it, we\'re basically riding a projectile from the biggest explosion that ever happened.

[Phoenix Aerospace]

More like a steady, violent expansion, actually. I try not to think of what\'ll happen once it reaches thermal equilibrium.

[Menelmacar]

Crap, is the real difference between Earth and Jupiter really so big? We are really nothing down here...

Not only that - but something like 98% of a proton is empty space - the matter we\'re all made of is only a tiny chunk of what may or may not be here. So we\'re really nothing down here AND really nothing down here ???

[Phoenix Aerospace]

And remember, kids, the proton itself only accounts for 30% of its own mass. The rest is composed of virtual particles, tiny subatomic particles that appear and disappear faster than can be measured, and quantum fluctuations.

[Menelmacar]

and thus matter/energy ARE created and destroyed - happens all the time. Problem, Einstein?

[Phoenix Aerospace]

Actually, no. According to quantum theory, the universe can create/destroy these virtual particles at 'will', so long as it repays the energy needed. That\'s why they only last on the Planck scale (read: scale of measurement too small to measure or quantify). Also, it can\'t create these particles if they\'re being observed. The universe is just weird like that.

…In other words, quantum physics play by the rules of politics. Who knew?

[Menelmacar]

Who\'s got the Universe\'s audit where it says it paid back all the energy though? It\'s handy to think that it all evens out in the end, but whenever is this case in life?

Proper question though - doesn\'t that suppose that virtual particles don\'t exist 'outside' the universe (where we\'re obvious doing the least observing)? I\'ve honestly not kept up with quantum physics... I wish I learned how interesting physics, chemistry and biology were in school but damn they make you hate it.

What about the question of the quantum watched pot? Is it boiled? Why did it boil? ;D

[Phoenix Aerospace]

Yeah. It sure would be nice if it all evened out, possibly through heat emissions, but that makes too much sense.

Edit: Funny how this thread went from a suggestion, to uses of gas giants, to the size of Jupiter, and finally to quantum physics. The universe really is nuts.

[GeneralIssue]

It all starts to make a bizarre sort of sense once you get a somewhat firm grasp on mass-energy equivalency. The important part is not pretending to know the bits of QM that don\'t make sense to you.

I\'ve heard physics professors say that anyone who thinks they have a real good idea of how quantum theory works doesn\'t really. Sort of how you might think a photon is a particle, but when you measure it it\'s a wave!! ???

[Menelmacar]

GeneralIssue, it\'s like that in every field - anyone who claims to be an 'expert' generally isn\'t as the more one finds out about something the more one realises one doesn\'t know.

Totally on-topic: If Squad are planning on an FTL system (seems sorta likely) - we will travel far and thus need lots to look at. How close we\'ll be able to get to gas planets is another question. Perhaps we\'ll get clouds first, then nebulae and THEN something with hardcore gravity like a gas giant.