The upper stratosphere of Saturn is calm because it receives less than a third of the scant solar energy that Jupiter gets. Also, at that height, Saturnian gravity is little more than Terrestrial. Thus, this place is safe for human explorers but how can they get there? Skip, Yvonne and Wang Li accompany the Sigman in his interstellar spaceship and thus they experience that upper stratospheric calm which Anderson describes and explains. Hopefully, human explorers will arrive there eventually. Meanwhile, scientifically informed sf writers like Poul Anderson can project what it might be like. There must be innumerable places like this in the Solar System that can be imaginatively described before they are experienced.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
THE SNOWS OF GANYMEDE is an early example by Anderson giving us informed speculation about what Ganymede might be like, based on what was known in the 1950's about that moon of Jupiter.
Ad astra! Sean
"Saturnian gravity is little more than Terrestrial"
Surface (or cloud top) gravity of solar system bodies clusters rather oddly near values that differ by ratios of 2.5 (or 0.4)
Near 25 m/s^2
Jupiter 24.79
Near 10 m/s^2
Neptune 11.27
Saturn 11.18
Earth 9.81
Uranus 9.00
Venus 8.87
Near 4 m/s^2
Mars 3.73
Mercury 3.70
Near 1.6 m/s^2
Io 1.82
Luna 1.62
Ganymede 1.41
Titan 1.36
Europa 1.31
Callisto 1.24
Probably coincidence, but a practical result is that there is little point in checking the health effects of gravity levels other than near 4 m/s^2 and 1.6 m/s^2.
*Maybe* gravity a bit under 1 m/s^2 is less bad than microgravity, but I would be really surprised if spending months at that is much better than spending months in the ISS.
If it is coincidence, planets in other solar systems will likely have surface gravities nowhere near these values.
Darn, I put extra spaces in to make the numbers nicely line up under each other, but copying into the blog deleted those spaces.
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