• weew@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Sierra_Is_Bee@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I’m not an engineer or anything, but perhaps you could get a space elevator high enough to reach escape velocity more easily. Then again, it would have to be very tall I’m sure… Never mind probably not feasible.

      • zhunk@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        For a geostationary orbit, which is where the center of mass of a space elevator would be:

        h = ³√ G * m * T² / ( 4 * π² ) - r

        • h: orbit height (m)
        • G: gravitational constant
        • m: mass of celestial body (kg)
        • T: period of rotation (s)
        • r: radius of celestial body (m)

        So, if the mass goes way up, the height of the orbit will, too, unless something crazy happens like the planet spinning super fast.

    • Idrunkenlysignedup@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      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