Solar power may still be possible? They may be not so good for probes but you can have a heavier fixed set up and collectors would not have to deal with dust storms etc. Power at Jupiter and Saturn is about 25 and 100 times less than at earth respectively. At least this is an option any other method must beat to be considered. All things equal, solar power is the least controversial.
If you're wanting to get to and from closer to the planet, with chemical propulsion, or ion propulsion without very slow transits, you're going to need lots of hops between icy moons closer and closer in, with ISRU plants on each.
I've long thought that electrothethers would be an amazing power source for the jovian system. Being magnetically bound to jupiters magnetic field, but gravitationally bound to Io or Europa, you can tap the raw inertial potential of entire moons for electricity. At the draw level for any plausable civilization, orbital effects will be neligable before the sun goes out, so it's effectively free energy.
Solar with giant ultra-thin mirror concentrators.
A couple of ideas occur:(1) These bases would not need to be assembled under high radiation. You could built tether-propelled stations out at Callisto...
Everyone's so fixated on Europa's surface ice that the access deltaV & lower radiation advantages of Callisto (or even Ganymede) get largely overlooked.
Hi, I recently saw a table on ProjectRho suggesting that a BFS had the delta-v to travel between the 9 or so major moons of Saturn, and trip times were also only on the order of days instead of months, and I thought "that is the Flash Gordon future that was promised us!" .. but how would we survive there? Most importantly what do we do for power when solar may no longer be an option?http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/appmissiontable.php
Quote from: KelvinZero on 10/21/2018 10:39 amHi, I recently saw a table on ProjectRho suggesting that a BFS had the delta-v to travel between the 9 or so major moons of Saturn, and trip times were also only on the order of days instead of months, and I thought "that is the Flash Gordon future that was promised us!" .. but how would we survive there? Most importantly what do we do for power when solar may no longer be an option?http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/appmissiontable.phpWhere do you see that? AFAIK, it is impossible with chemical rockets.
Quote from: IRobot on 11/16/2018 09:52 amQuote from: KelvinZero on 10/21/2018 10:39 amHi, I recently saw a table on ProjectRho suggesting that a BFS had the delta-v to travel between the 9 or so major moons of Saturn, and trip times were also only on the order of days instead of months, and I thought "that is the Flash Gordon future that was promised us!" .. but how would we survive there? Most importantly what do we do for power when solar may no longer be an option?http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/appmissiontable.phpWhere do you see that? AFAIK, it is impossible with chemical rockets.IIRC that is with a BFS fully top up with propellants at a local propellant depot in Cis-Saturn space.
If you want to settle the outer solar system (or any part of the solar system), support fusion research. You solve the propulsion issues, you solve the power issues. The rest is fait accompli.
Postulating fusion is not much fun because if you have science fiction power you might as well have science fiction ships as well. It may well solve everything but you cannot say much more about it.
Quote from: KelvinZero on 10/21/2018 11:34 pmA couple of ideas occur:(1) These bases would not need to be assembled under high radiation. You could built tether-propelled stations out at Callisto...I'm looking forward to Europa Clipper/JUICE results to tell us a lot more about Callisto. If there's accessible water at Callisto, then in my opinion it immediately becomes much more viable for settlement than just about anywhere else at Jupiter or Saturn. Everyone's so fixated on Europa's surface ice that the access deltaV & lower radiation advantages of Callisto (or even Ganymede) get largely overlooked.
For this thread I also have a pet interest in Saturn though.. not necessarily a sensible one: just that apparently a BFS-like performance could travel between all the major moons of Saturn, and my understanding is that shielding from Saturn's radiation is plausible without an entirely different sort of ship. It was just this combination of knowable technology and a mini-solarsystem of worlds that a trader could travel between that I thought was cool. Flash gordon, Serenity, millenium falcon, it is such a common trope of a single-owner ship that can visit multiple worlds. I imagine whatever we use to enter the radiation belt of jupiter to be more like a government-managed subway system. massive shielded cyclers or similar.
Along those lines, another possibility you could consider is travelling between hypothetical colonies at trojans in Jupiters L4 and L5 libration points. The Greeks and Trojan camps could conceivably have whole groups of asteroids that stay (relatively) close together.