Aerobraking at Triton Options

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Flying on Triton is no problem; you just need a chopper with blades a couple of kilometers long...

(Semi)seriously, would anything we think of as atmospheric flight work at all on Triton? I doubt that even a balloon "filled" with several cubic km of lab-quality vacuum would generate enough lift to get itself off the surface, much less a useful payload. Mars by comparison is a veritable pressure cooker.

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Limited as it is, Triton's atmosphere is still an aerobraking resource per Helvick's calculations. Whether it SHOULD be used as such is a whole other issue. It may conceivably give some flexibility in trajectory planning & fuel budgeting (i.e., a Neptune orbiter/Triton lander might be able to cast off the lander at some point during its own aerobraking sequence & let the lander do its own aerobraking @ Triton). That scenario is kind of complex in terms of mission-critical events, but may be worth thinking about in terms of fuel savings.

And actually, isn't it almost axiomatic that highly elliptical orbits are much cheaper to achieve in terms of delta-V? If that's a valid assumption, then this 'dual-aerobraking' scenario might allow us to fly a significantly larger lander payload.