I’m studying some ideas for a future hard sci-fi adventure using Mongoose Traveller 2ed and Orbital 2100, with player characters landing in Europa (Jupiter’s moon) to study the chance of life in the ocean under the moon’s icy shell.
I’m thinking about giving them some kind of submarine vessels, like a bathyscaphe or armoured diving suits, and probably a mobile base. Have any of you thought about how to design a vehicle that can be at the same time a dropship and a terrestrial base/vehicle to travel over the surface of Europa and transport the bathyscaphe to a chosen site?
Hard sci-fi, you say? Excellent features could be battling cancer thanks to cosmic rays, and the disintegration of skeletal mass and deteriorating vision thanks to zero gravity. Punishing and crushingly repetitive schedules of medical therapy and physical exercise, plus batteries of psychological tests could add to the excitement of an expedition!
Or are the crew going to be far more fit for space travel than early humans?
Will their bodies be entirely synthetic, and their minds simply transmitted to the exploration craft after it arrives? Or will they be genetically engineered, proof against the rigours of interplanetary exploration? Will they be human at all?
Or could they be disposable human workers employed by an unaccountable interplanetary corporation, who are holding their nearest and dearest hostage to ensure their compliance?
Short version: if you want to go genuinely hard sci-fi, things may look very, very different to how they're depicted in TV space operas.
I'm planning to do it genuinely hard sci-fi, so it will have to deal with rather complicated things like those 5.4 Sv of surface radiation (see Colonization of Europa - Environment).
As for the player characters I'm planning to have a crew of scientists and, probably, some military types.