Other Planets
In addition to Venus, floating cities have been proposed in science fiction on several other planets. For example, floating cities might also permit settlement of the outer three gas giants, as the gas giants lack solid surfaces. Jupiter is not promising for habitation due to its high gravity, escape velocity and radiation, but the solar system's other gas giants (Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) may be more practical. In 1978, the British Interplanetary Society's Project Daedalus envisioned floating factories in the atmospheres of Jupiter refining Helium-3 to produce fuel for an interstellar probe. Michael McCollum notes that the "surface" gravity of Saturn (that is, at the visible cloud layer, where the atmospheric pressure is about the same as Earth's) is very close to that of Earth, and in his novel The Clouds of Saturn, he envisioned cities floating in the Saturnian atmosphere, where the buoyancy is provided by envelopes of hydrogen heated by fusion reactors. Uranus and Neptune also have "surface" gravities comparable to Earth's, and even lower escape velocities than Saturn. Cecelia Holland populated Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus with mutant humans, the Styth, in floating cities in her only SF novel, Floating Worlds (1975).
Read more about this topic: Floating City (science Fiction)
Famous quotes containing the word planets:
“I would sell my life to avoid
the pain that begins in the crib
with its bars or perhaps
with your first breath
when the planets drill
your future into you....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Why are all these dolls falling out of the sky?
Was there a father?
Or have the planets cut holes in their nets
and let our childhood out,
or are we the dolls themselves,
born but never fed?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)