Sometimes I wish we could see photos of the interior of a gas giant, even if those photos end up being a gray screen because of all the clouds
There's a story from (I just looked it up) 1944, before it was widely known the gas giants have no surfaces, about humans who modify themselves to explore Jupiter.
Before the characters undergo the transformation, they see Jupiter as a terrifying wasteland of never-ending storms - and after, nobody comes back.
If I remember correctly, the story is about a man and his dog who go through the process and then, when it is complete, Jupiter appears as a paradise and they realize that the reason people don't come back is because it's a better life once they become Jovians.
“Four men, two by two, had gone into the howling maelstrom that was Jupiter and had not returned. They had walked into the keening gale – or rather, they had loped, bellies low against the ground, wet sides gleaming in the rain. For they did not go in the shape of men.”
The end is:
"'They would turn me back into a dog,' said Towser. 'And me,' said Fowler, 'back into a man.'"
I hadn't realized how much that story affected me, because my reaction to colonizing Mars, for years, really, has been that it's pointless to try until it's practical to become Martians. Otherwise you might as well live in a cave anywhere. But I didn't link it consciously.
For example, shifting the band of tolerance for gravity, temperature, gas pressure, etc.
Scientific outposts would be fine, but much like Antarctica, no one ought to be in a position where they have to live in caves or cans their entire life.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy changed my mind on this. There is natural beauty there that is worth trying to preserve and experience. Yes, we should terraform. But slowly and deliberately. A good way to check this is to have humans on the surface while terraforming takes place.
Compare Mars to Antarctica. While there's a significant science-focused presence, no one lives there lives there. While various treaties complicate the issue, to the best of my knowledge, no one even speaks about wanting to spend their entire life there. Living permanently on Mars without extensive terraforming would mean generations of people living out their lives in caves and metal cans, never getting to go outside without putting on the equivalent of a SCUBA suit, at a minimum. It makes for great stories, but as a cradle-to-grave life is seems unethical to help create that situation.
Besides, I think gradual (or no) terraforming of Mars is doomed. Getting to orbit is increasingly cheap, and that makes getting to Mars easier, whether by the ITN [1], or more direct method. You can get to Mars with a Cubesat-type spacecraft design. [2] Somebody is going to leverage those possibility to start terraforming Mars, if they haven't done so already. Optimal terraforming probably requires adding atmosphere, presumably via comet impacts. That will take more than Cubesats, but the possibility was demonstrated by DART. Unless our civilization collapses, fast terraforming of Mars is only going to get easier, and probably sooner rather than later, someone will start the process.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Netwo... 2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/cubesat-at...
Arthur C. Clarke - A Meeting with Medusa
Robert L. Forward - Saturn Rukh
Michael McCollum - The Clouds of Saturn
Ben Bova - Leviathans of Jupiter
And an honorable mention to Carl Sagan - Cosmos : One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue https://vimeo.com/284643737
Previously in the same book it is implied that these "creatures of the gas-giant atmosphere" are animal level intellects. But my headcanon is that perhaps there are Culture ships with Nasqueron Dwellers or similar intelligent gas-dwellers with complex societies on-board.
You are absolutely right that The Algebraist is full of gas-dwelling creatures. But as far as I can recall while they have a "Culture" feel to them there are no direct Culture references in that book. But maybe I have missed something.
That collection also has uplifted dogs and ants.
Frederick Pohl (another SciFi Grandmaster) tackled the Mars issue in ManPlus
We'll need to shed these bodies evolved for earth gasses, gravity, nutrients, temperatures, and radiation environment.
Brain uploads to computers would let us go anywhere. Or perhaps more probably, AI will take over evolution in our stead. No human body and death to disadvantage them.
In one lifetime you've seen computers jump dramatically in power. By the end of your life, I suspect that you'll see computers that may scare you.
But to answer your question, it's the digital data and files to look to, not the hardware. We have files floating around from the 60's today, and we're picking up more and more fidelity with which we can represent the world every year. That won't stop.
If you find some way of shining a light or radio wave that passes through one layer and reflects off the next, you could map that boundary. I can only imagine the turbulent boundary between the two layers being one of the most beautiful sights imaginable. Endless noise on a cosmic scale, patterned first by fluid dynamics, then successively by other phenomena of physics.
Cheap orbital access will hopefully give us a lot more science missions.