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"Super-Earth" planets are giant-size versions of Earth, and some research has suggested that they're more likely to be habitable than Earth-size worlds. But a new study reveals how difficult it would be for any aliens on these exoplanets to explore space.
To launch the equivalent of an Apollo moon mission, a rocket on a super-Earth would need to have a mass of about 440,000 tons (400,000 metric tons), due to fuel requirements, the study said. That's on the order of the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.
"On more-massive planets, spaceflight would be exponentially more expensive," said study author Michael Hippke, an independent researcher affiliated with the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany. "Such civilizations would not have satellite TV, a moon mission or a Hubble Space Telescope."
https://www.space.com/40375-super-earth-exoplanets-hard-aliens-launch.html
[Also Covered By]: GIZMODO
[Paper]: Spaceflight from Super-Earths is difficult
[Related]: 10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @01:48PM
there are updrafts, that birds routinely use to climb up (just watch some hawks when you get a chance). relative to the air, they are falling in a spiral, but their terminal velocity is smaller than the upwards velocity of the air, so they go up. people in gliders also do this routinely.
there are also horizontal winds, that can be taken advantage of with the right airship. in our atmosphere, I don't know that anyone tries to do this (I know that weather balloons get carried by these high altitude winds, but I don't know how much this is actually desired by the weather people).
I don't know what you mean by "kite reacting against the ground", but this is the mechanism that GP is referring to: climb up through some means (not necessarily updrafts) until you reach the high winds, and the high winds will accelerate you to a large horizontal speed; afterwards you can start the rocket for the additional speed that you need to get off the planet.
people in gliders do the following: find out how far you can get from a given height; given the distance you want to travel, deduce the height required, then use an updraft to get there, afterwards you get out of the updraft and just glide to wherever you want.