this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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The atmospheric temperature of Jupiter varies, but is well below zero degrees, Celsius or Fahrenheit. This means you could make a habitable shelter using neutral buoyancy to keep it in the desirable pressure ranges simply by keeping it at room temperature. You could even do the hot air balloon technique and have a large balloon heated to possibly above room temperature to allow for a larger habitat with stronger materials, so long as the net density is about one atmosphere.
None of this solves the question of how you power it, or do that orbital insertion in the first place, but Dr. Robert Forward discusses the mechanics of a similar idea in his novel Saturn Rukh.
As a huge sci fi fan, thanks for the rec. Have never read Forward.
Yeah, I love to say: if you assume unlimited free energy, then... all sorts of cool things suddenly become realistic. But we also probably just boil the planet to a cinder (unlimited energy becomes unlimited waste heat) due to short sighted greed instead. Cause things like Bitcoin make no fucking sense on the scale of civilization, and yet how much energy do we spend on it?
With unlimited energy someone will be like: damn, I could make a fortune harvesting all the atmospheric nitrogen and hoarding it and selling it back to the world so they can be 3% nitrogen by mass. Or some shit.