That the atmosphere is mostly hydrogen doesn't make for easy ballooning. There isn't really a gas much lighter to provide lift. It also begs the question of 'why'. Everywhere you look, there is only wind, and no minerals to repair things with.
A giant platform, with tubes hanging down to mine hydrogen and be a space gas station, partly fusioning it for energy and thrust to propel and keep it up, something like that?
Any of the gas they 'mined' (ignoring the immense difficulties of trying to mine liquid hydrogen) would be stuck on the platform without a rocket to carry it out of orbit. It would be much, much easier to stick a base on Ganymede or something and convert some of the ice there into fuel.
Difficulties? I thought liquid, so just suck it up? And with "gas station" I meant ships coming by and fetching it, so there is your rocket :D Ok, thinking too much the space trucker way, but isn't water much less of a fuel than hydrogen?
Hydrogen only exists as a liquid at very uncomfortable pressures and temperatures.
Water can be split into its separate components. It's much easier to gather water than it is liquid Hydrogen, and if one wanted to make a gas station, it would make sense to build it on an asteroid or a small moon where takeoff and landing uses little fuel. Not on a gas giant with triple digit escape velocity and a thick atmosphere asking for a massive heat shield.
Location, location, location. Ceres, that's where you want to set up. Just enough gravity so you probably can't jump off it, lots of ice, a fair bit closer than Ganymede with easier take offs, convenient halfway between Mars and all those Jovian moons. Open 24/7 and sell the hot dogs at cost.
