Chapter 23, Inferno Summary

Second Officer Chris Floyd, Dr. Floyd's grandson, thinks about Lucifer and how long it is expected to last as a small star. Estimates range from a thousand to a million years. Galaxy approaches Io and launches one of the rocket probes, called penetrometers. This trial works well, but Dr. van der Berg expects the penetrometers to fail on Europa, probably, because he thinks that Mount Zeus is made of diamond, one of the hardest known substances.

Chapter 23, Inferno Analysis

Second Officer Chris Floyd is like his grandfather, Dr. Floyd. Chris appreciates the meanings of cosmic events, such as the ignition of Jupiter into a small star. His relationship with his grandfather is likely close, due to having known each other for the first ten years of Chris' life. The penetrometer experiment seems to be more for preparation than to actually study...