Consider Setting Your Space Operas on Saturn - Reactor

It’s fashionable amongst persons of a certain age to moan about how the future has not lived up to expectations, how children are rude and everyone is writing a book, or how goods and services provided today are inferior to those provided forty years ago¹. However, there is one aspect of our future that everyone I queried agreed has delivered beyond expectations (at least, once it became clear that was the most efficient way to end the conversation). That’s the state of planetary science.

There was a lamentable period between July 1965 (when Mariner 4 arrived at Mars) and March 1979 (when Voyager 1 arrived at Jupiter) in which the impression given by our space probes was of a dead, boring Solar System. The Moon was an airless dead rock, Mars was a nearly airless dead rock, Venus was an overheated dead rock, Mercury admittedly had a fascinating spin-orbit resonance but was still a dead rock.

Furthermore, the impression given wasn’t just of a dead Solar System, but a static death. Terms like “primordial” were thrown around. The Solar System wasn’t just dead—it had been dead and unchanging for billions of years. I can tell you, this was a major bummer for anyone who was, as I was, a kid in the 1960s and 1970s.

Once the images of Jupiter’s moons began trickling in, at a hilariously low baud rate, that changed. Jupiter’s moons were clearly dynamic worlds. Europa, at least, seemed to have a subsurface ocean. Our understanding of the Solar System was transformed, a process that is ongoing.

A convenient example of the pace of revelation would be John Varley’s 1979 Titan, whose plot is set in motion by the discovery in 2025 of a twelfth Saturnian moon. Unfortunately for Varley, the twelfth Saturnian moon is not a vast alien habitat suitable for thrilling adventures, as we learned when it was discovered just a year later, in 1980, along with two more moons. Even more moons followed.

In March 2025, the number of moons known to be orbiting Saturn jumped from 146²—already far more than Jupiter’s 97—to 274, thanks to the discovery of 128 previously undetected small moons. I am going to go out on a limb here and speculate that there are probably a metric whackload of small bodies that have yet to be spotted. Further, given that Saturn already has so many more known moons than Jupiter (even though Jupiter is much closer to us, which makes spotting Jovian moons easier) Saturn will probably be able to keep its lead³.

So, what does that matter to hard-working science fiction fans and writers? Aside from the sheer awesomeness of Saturn’s moon system, Saturn, or at least its moons, have tremendous potential, from a space opera perspective.

As you may recall from this semi-recent essay, space operas seem to require a multiplicity of worlds and a certain grandeur of scale. However, as I pointed out in that essay, given judicious worldbuilding choices, the Solar System can provide that scale. Saturn alone can deliver that scale.

Some folks will point out that those new moons are fairly small; most of them are barely over 3+ km diameters. That’s quite true. However, even a dinky moon is large in human terms. If my slide rule does not betray me, a 3 km diameter ice moon might mass about 12 billion tonnes, or fifteen New York Cities. Put together, the newly discovered moons probably mass about two thousand New York Cities.

Many space opera worlds give the impression of being not much larger than a Paramount backlot. The area of fifteen New York Cities combined is generally held to be larger than a Paramount backlot. Even ignoring the large moons (and why would we?), there’s enough easily accessible material in the Saturn system to justify a vast constellation of space cities⁴, each one of a size around which authors can easily wrap their minds.

Rather conveniently for your budding space opera author, many Saturnian moons abound in organic material, which is to say, the stuff from which living organisms are made⁵. Many protagonists are living organisms, so it’s pretty handy to have organic matter from which to construct them. In fact, there are speculations that moons such as Enceladus and Titan might already have life-bearing oceans; science is still out on that.

Saturn’s orbital dynamics offer intriguing plot potential. First, getting from one moon to another moon demands only modest delta vees and for most of the major moons, modest travel times.

Second, because it is so far from the Sun, Saturn is isolated in terms of delta vee and travel time from the other planets. Getting around within Saturn’s moon system will always be inherently faster and easier than travelling to Jupiter or to the inner system. Therefore, Saturn’s penumbra is a natural region.

Third, while the largest of Saturn’s moons orbit share a common plane and direction, Saturn’s smaller, irregular, moons include a number of dynamic families, moons whose paths around Saturn are similar to the other members of the family but different from other moons. These may be remnants of bodies whose capture by Saturn was kinetically exciting. Examples include the Inuit group, the Gallic group, and various subgroups of the Norse group, such as the Phoebe and the Kari. Again, because travel within families will be easier than travel between families, those families represent natural divisions.

Granted, transportation barriers aren’t the only factor defining borders. Just ask Ireland or Korea.

Admittedly, there is one resource in which the Saturn moon system is deficient⁶: heavy elements. Materials readily on hand around Saturn are mostly lighter elements and their compounds. Still, Saturn seems adept at capturing passing objects and it would not be surprising if a handful of M-type asteroids had been captured. Scarce resources are, of course, the stuff of which plot-driving conflicts are made.

I would argue that Saturn’s moons appear to offer every detail essential to space opera, with the added benefit of allowing authors to delay writing by investing time in calculating orbital parameters. Plus, Saturn has those beautiful rings, a spectacle no other planet can match!⁷ So, if you’re considering writing a space opera, consider setting it around Saturn.

1. For an example that has personal relevance, old time appliances were often as durable as T-34s and about as energy efficient. ↩︎
2. Not counting the ring particles as individual moons, or the count would be considerably larger. Speaking of the rings, because they orbit within the Roche limit of a gas giant, their orbital velocity is high and therefore retrieving material from the rings would be difficult. Well, except for groups living in the rings themselves. I don’t know that a habitat in the middle of a region filled with small, extremely fast-moving objects would last all that long. Yeah, the rings are mostly orbiting in the same direction at roughly similar speeds, but it still seems like it would be like living in a revolving cement truck drum filled with gravel. Plus, Saturn’s main rings have “an energetic particle and gamma ray photon radiation environment” which may not appeal. We probably don’t have to worry about corporations strip-mining the rings. Worst-case scenario, artists might squabble over what colour to paint the rings. ↩︎
3. Jupiter has the lead with respect to giant moons, four to Saturn’s one. However, most of the Jovian giant moons are within Jupiter’s powerful Van Allen belts, where an unprotected human could receive a lethal radiation dose in the time it took to drink a cup of tea. Although since the moons also don’t have atmospheres as such, an unprotected human would be doing very well not to die in the first minute or so anyway. Not to mention their tea would boil away in the vacuum. ↩︎
4. Without necessarily being fast. Saturn’s farthest moons have orbital periods in excess of four years. Assuming minimum energy transfer orbits, travel time could be measured in years. ↩︎
5. And which can also be used to make plastic, which I suspect will dominate building materials. ↩︎
6. Two, including the current lack of space habitats. Three, if fusion isn’t an option. The downside of being so far from the Sun is that solar power will be that much more difficult, although it should still be workable. ↩︎
7. The rings, being thin, are essentially invisible to co-planar moons. This constitutes full disclosure for real estate regulatory purposes. ↩︎