Can you land on the Planet Uranus?

Answer 1

Wikipedia says about the prospects of colonising Uranus:

"Because Uranus has the lowest escape velocity of the four gas giants, it has been proposed as a mining site for helium-3. If human supervision of the robotic activity proved necessary, one of Uranus' natural satellites might serve as a base. An alternative is to place floating cities in its atmosphere. By using balloons filled with hydrogen, large masses can be suspended underneath at roughly Earth gravity."

Helum 3 is spread by the solar wind and would make an ideal fuel for fusion reactors that would power future rockets and spacecraft,

Answer 2

Most likely no, not without unimaginably (and science-fictionally) advanced technology :

Uranus is a gas giant, i.e. the planet is a ball of gas, -save for- a small inner rocky core somewhat smaller than the earth. So you can't say you can't land on Uranus cause it has no surface since it has one, you just have to go waaay deep to find it.

So landing on Uranus is like dropping a submarine in the dense atmosphere, to get to the inner, solid core.

However, the pressure, at this depth under all the gas, is about 5 million times that of earth's atmosphere, and the temperature is estimated to be 6900 ° K.
No known material could withstand those conditions, much less existing materials and technologies.

For instance, steel has a tensile strength of at most about 1.9 billion pascals before it breaks, and carbon nanotubes allegedly could have as much as 45 or even 300 billion pascal of tensile strength, which would be the record so far (that's theoretical, it's never really been proved).
An atmosphere is about 100 000 pascals, if you had to convert that'd be 3 million atmosphere of tensile strength for the carbon nanotubes, still too little for an Uranus landing.

Besides, that's tensile strength, which is not the same as the pressure a hull made of that material can withstand before collapsing; that collapse pressure is normally inferior, a lot inferior.

Same for the temperature, steel usually melts at around 1650° K, and carbon nanotubes, once again one of the most resilient materials, are stable up to 3000 degree K. Oh, you could still say that tungsten has a melting point of 3700° K ... still too small.

So, sorry, no, you can't really land on Uranus :p

Answer 3

I noticed you asked this about Saturn as well (and even about Uranus twice).

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are all gas giants. You cannot land anything on them as there is no solid surface. The satellites could theoretically be landed on, as would be the case with most other bodies in the solar system.

But as far as the gas giant planets themselves, no.

Answer 4

I agree with one of the other answers. Uranus IS made up mostly of gas . So...why would anyone want to land on Uranus with so much gas around it?

Answer 5

Yes and no. Although it is a gas giant it does have a hard rocky core. The depth of this core is very deep though so you couldn't withstand the heat or the pressure to get to it.

Answer 6

Not sure, I think this planet is mainly made of gas, there is no land there.

Answer 7

Laton got it exactly right. His answer is definately worth the 10 points.

Answer 8

I agree with Brian. You can't cause it's just not solid. It's made entirely out of gas.

Answer 9

uranus is a 'Jovian' planet therefore doesnt have any surface.....its gas

Answer 10

Sorry, you asked for it ....