starship-design: Re: Land or orbit

[TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

Kyle wrote:

>As far as pressure, I've thought about it, and can't come up with a
>plausible system
>for measuring it from here. Albedo would probably not work (a friend
>of mine tried this, and said that the atmosphere of mars was between
>8000 and 19000 
>millibars!) Density wave analysis, maybe, but how do we pass density
>waves 11.9 ly
>to target, bounce them back, and record the information? Let alone
>generate them in
>the first place. If anyone has an idea, let me know.

There must exist some models that can calculate this. I assume they depend
on the gravitational pull (escape velocity) of the planet and its mean
temperature.

It seems from reading a bit on that "Alien Planet Designer" page you
mentioned, that Stephen Gillett has done some work on it. Maybe you could
get hold of some of his papers (or a book if he did write one).

Timothy