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Bizarre new planet is largest known rocky world, 40 times as massive as Earth
(www.nationalgeographic.com)
News and findings about our cosmos.
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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 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.
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
So, if the mass goes way up, the height of the orbit will, too, unless something crazy happens like the planet spinning super fast.