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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: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:16PM
Not really. We were close to using space as a battleground in the Cold War, but... at this point in time, if we were to make a battleground of space we'd just be trashing Trillions of dollars of investment in navigation, communication and surveillance satellites - and I think the business interests of the world are powerful enough to prevent the politicians from doing that. Putting up shrapnel in a counter-directional orbit at geo-stationary altitude is not the same thing as bombing a rice patty or the desert - making geostationary un-usable would be like salting all the wheat and corn fields of the American Midwest.
I think we have enough global social cohesion to keep from slugging it out throughout the solar system, but the future may prove me wrong.
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