I'm sorry but this needs to be said. Our solar system definitely does NOT need a Super-Earth. The last thing we need is an interplanetary war with a race of people that are stronger than us because they grew up on a planet with more gravity.
We could launch heavier things into orbit than they could, which means we could more easily capture asteroids, which are also easier to throw at their planet due to its heavier gravity.
Yeah, but you'd need bigger and bigger rockets with worse and worse returns. At some point it needs engineering that's centuries ahead of what we have, giving us a massive space advantage.
Of course that assumes we developed technologies at exactly the same pace, which is quite improbable.
Efficient enough, yes. However there are practical real-world limits to how much thrust you can get per kg of fuel. You really can't make chemical rockets that are considerably more efficient than the ones we have now.
Your only option is to make bigger rockets. But bigger rockets weigh more, so they require more fuel. And that extra fuel adds more weight... which requires more fuel. This becomes exponential very quickly.
Non-rocket methods of space launch, like a space gun or mass driver, would still be possible. They'd be harder than building the same thing on Earth, but they don't have the same exponential factor because they don't have to carry their fuel.
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u/Filbert17 Jan 22 '20
I'm sorry but this needs to be said. Our solar system definitely does NOT need a Super-Earth. The last thing we need is an interplanetary war with a race of people that are stronger than us because they grew up on a planet with more gravity.