If there’s life on that planet, they gonna have a hard time making it to orbit
I actually wonder what’s the biggest (rocky) planet that is actually possible to launch a chemical rocket from. At some point you just can’t get enough thrust to weight, right? They’d have to resort to exotic stuff like nuclear fission engines.
I’m not a smart person, but my calculator says that a 200lb person would weigh 4 tons so I’m not totally sure there could even be multicellular life on that planet. Plus any atmosphere would probably be quite thicc
Some people theorize that such a planet would actually be better for rocketry because they’d be forced to use significantly better propellant than chemical rockets, so, they’d start with nuclear rockets. If they got that far, anyway.
I remember to read somewhere that Earth is not far below the size limit to launch chemical rockets, which coincidentally means that if some day aliens were to visit us, either they would have more advanced technology that allows to create thrust with lighter fuel (nuclear or idk I’m not a rocket scientist), or they would come from a smaller planet with a weaker gravity, which means they would be physically weaker than us
If there’s life on that planet, they gonna have a hard time making it to orbit
I actually wonder what’s the biggest (rocky) planet that is actually possible to launch a chemical rocket from. At some point you just can’t get enough thrust to weight, right? They’d have to resort to exotic stuff like nuclear fission engines.
Sounds like a question to email Randall Monroe about.
I’m not a smart person, but my calculator says that a 200lb person would weigh 4 tons so I’m not totally sure there could even be multicellular life on that planet. Plus any atmosphere would probably be quite thicc
Some people theorize that such a planet would actually be better for rocketry because they’d be forced to use significantly better propellant than chemical rockets, so, they’d start with nuclear rockets. If they got that far, anyway.
And since their planet is so much larger, it makes the vast irradiated zones created by failed launches easier to ignore!
I remember to read somewhere that Earth is not far below the size limit to launch chemical rockets, which coincidentally means that if some day aliens were to visit us, either they would have more advanced technology that allows to create thrust with lighter fuel (nuclear or idk I’m not a rocket scientist), or they would come from a smaller planet with a weaker gravity, which means they would be physically weaker than us