A far off question - Orbital entry into the gas giants?

[richfororbit]

How could Astronauts enter the atmospheres or the gas giants in our system? An MPCV and or a Module clearly are not suitable for such a mission.

Thinking about this seems almost like a quite a bit of technology would be needed to develop first before such a mission could be considered?:uhh:

 

[Urwumpe]

How could Astronauts enter the atmospheres or the gas giants in our system? An MPCV and or a Module clearly are not suitable for such a mission.

Thinking about this seems almost like a quite a bit of technology would be needed to develop first before such a mission could be considered?:uhh:

Well, you can enter them. But leaving them could be a bit harder...

Pay attention to the pressure ... (Also, the re-entry did cost the probe only about 50% of its heat shield mass and caused a deceleration of 230 g... maybe a bit hard for a human... and after 30 minutes from EI, the parachute melted)

Also, radiation hardening might be a much worse problem to get to the gas giants.

 

[ISProgram]

Definitely. Galileo's atmosphere probe, which entered Jupiter's atmosphere directly, suffered from 200 g of deceleration, which is clearly harmful, if not deadly, to humans if prolonged. Its heatshield lost over half its own weight (the heatshield itself made up half of the total probe's weight) during the entry.

The probe lost 1/4 of its weight just getting through the atmosphere. At least it managed to show we could do it. But after that, it also had to deal with pressure even before it stopped transmitting, and then the high temperature of the atmosphere itself.

Having said all this, what (crazed) space agency or (insane) astronaut would want to go to Jupiter directly? No one, to my knowledge, though the smaller moons are much more hospitable.

Now, it might just be possible to "land" on Jupiter without giving you spacecraft a serious weight-loss diet in the progress. It comes down to how you enter the atmosphere, which can be done directly or from orbit.

The Galileo probe did it directly, so it had a lot of speed relative to Jupiter. It's best to enter a orbit first, then drop the reentry vehicle, which should dramatically reduce the entry speeds and thus thermal protection mass. Even so, I doubt PICA would cut for the job. Perhaps a inflatable heatshield would be better? :idk:

EDIT: Urwumpe just :ninja:ed me...

 

[Artlav]

1. Pick Saturn, not Jupiter - less radiation and gravity.
2. Pack along a balloon and a spare - there is nothing to land on, so you'll have to hang around the upper atmosphere (no pun intended).
3. Make sure your engine is powered by sufficiently advanced magic, since launching back into orbit would take a lot of DV.

The aerobraking and entry itself does not sound like such a big problem -take it slowly and glide in, not slowing down much on every hop to keep the Gs low.
Or just use point 3 to skip the entry entirely and do a powered descent.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

I think I'd rather hang out somewhere around Callisto instead, then fire probes at Jupiter.

But radiation is still going to be a big problem.

 

[asbjos]

I can see no reason for an astronaut to enter a gas giant. There is no surface, only endless amounts of gas, so there is nothing an astronaut can do there which a probe can not.

 

[francisdrake]

THE CLOUDS OF SATURN
by Michael McCollum

When the sun flared out of control and boiled Earth's oceans, humanity took refuge in a place that few would have predicted. In the greatest migration in history, the entire human race took up residence among the towering clouds and deep clear-air canyons of Saturn's upper atmosphere.

http://www.scifi-az.com/saturn2.htm

 

[Unstung]

Jupiter's ionized radiation may not be much of a problem if the plasma torus around some moons is avoided and the spacecraft enters the atmosphere from a pole, similar to Juno's highly inclined orbit. Long lived balloons have been successfully demonstrated in the atmosphere of Venus as a way to linger at friendlier high altitudes. Sending an unmanned balloon seems feasible, but a manned mission is much more risky, complicated, and expensive. Atmospheric probes have been designed to measure the composition of gas giants to depth so a balloon may provide less important scientific data.

A manned mission is not worth the great expense to keep the crew alive and somehow return them. If NASA's Planetary Science division had its way, atmospheric probes for Saturn and Uranus would already be under construction for launch windows at the end of this decade. Callisto is the most logical first step for future manned exploration of the outer planets. It's the only Galilean moon far enough from Jupiter's radiation. There are benefits to a human presence in the Jupiter system.

 

[kamaz]

That's going in tangent but --

The radiation enviroment on Europa is so that ~1m of ice effectively stops the radiation. This means that both Ganymede and Europa are actually colonizable, provided that you have a heavily shielded spacecraft to get there, and immediately transfer your crews to under-ice bases.

 

[statickid]

I can see no reason for an astronaut to enter a gas giant. There is no surface, only endless amounts of gas, so there is nothing an astronaut can do there which a probe can not.

The astronaut can go "ooooooooooooo"

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Not for long...

 

[statickid]

Followed by aaaaaaaaaaaa! Rrrrrgghhhggghfg

 

[Ghostrider]

Raise your arms on the way down. It's more fun when you raise your arms up on the way down.