Personally, I don’t think our future lies in any planetary gravity well at all. The larger the gravity well, the more difficult and expensive it is to escape from, and there’s no particular resource available there that we can’t get from the asteroid belt or the other moons in the system.
Our own moon gives us the low gravity and easy escape vectoring to get us to the asteroid belt. The asteroid blt gives us the resources to continue outwards to the Jovian and Saturnian moons and the zero gee necessary to easily construct ships/habitats of any size we want without worrying about escaping a gravity well.
Gravity is the hard part. Why would be spend billions to escape one gravity well just to sink ourselves down into another when an orbital habitat can be much better regulated to our needs.
Personally, I don’t think our future lies in any planetary gravity well at all. The larger the gravity well, the more difficult and expensive it is to escape from, and there’s no particular resource available there that we can’t get from the asteroid belt or the other moons in the system.
Our own moon gives us the low gravity and easy escape vectoring to get us to the asteroid belt. The asteroid blt gives us the resources to continue outwards to the Jovian and Saturnian moons and the zero gee necessary to easily construct ships/habitats of any size we want without worrying about escaping a gravity well.
Gravity is the hard part. Why would be spend billions to escape one gravity well just to sink ourselves down into another when an orbital habitat can be much better regulated to our needs.