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cdelsolar • today at 4:33 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

It wouldn’t be that fun to live on one. The article says picture paradise, but we’re talking about potentially 1.5-2g with a dense atmosphere; we’d feel terrible all the time. Also whatever biology is in that planet is probably not compatible with us; we likely wouldn’t be able to eat it. Finally once you land, you’re screwed and stuck there. Traditional chemical propellants barely work for our planet, we’d need new ways of taking off for higher escape velocities.


Replies

m4rtink • today at 5:27 PM

IIRC non reactive launch methods would still work there, e.g.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain

Dense atmosphere might enable getting your air breathing first stage higher & could still enable chemical or nuclear assisted reactive launch.

And Orion would likely still launch just fine, just with less payload.