On 5 Jul 2016 at 11:38, Kelly St. Clair wrote:

> Easy answer:  the LBBs were written before the Voyagers got a good
> close look at Jupiter, and thus, before most people really knew
> /anything/ about it besides what Galileo et al had observed.  Not
> quite "Venus is a swampy jungle", but close.

Well, the radiation environment was a surprise, but the gravity was
*known*. And it would make "skimming" really "interesting".

That said Poul Anderson had folks skimming Jupiter. But to extract
gases other thasn the usual.

Of cours, that was back when we still thought that the atmosphere was
rich in various hydrocarbons and other things.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com