On 5 Jul 2016 at 14:11, C. Berry wrote:

> Of course, even a relatively big gas giant like Jupiter has a
> "surface" gravity of only 2.5g, so only the most underpowered ships
> (hi there, Free Trader!) will need to use the CG-assisted-orbit
> approach to skimming. And a gas giant like Saturn has a "surface"
> gravity of about 1g, so anything that can land and take off on an
> Earth-sized rocky world can also skim such a gas giant very easily.

Just keep in mind that Jupiter is about as *big* as a GG can get. add
more mass and they start getting *smaller*. Which, along with the
higher mass, means that the gravity at the top of the atmosphere gets
higher too.

So it's possible to have super-jupiters (we've detected a number of
them) that likely have gravity too high to skim.

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