RE: Burning Cosmic Commons (was: ... Fermi's Paradox?)
hal@rain.org
Fri, 5 Mar 1999 11:35:02 -0800
I'm not too knowledgable about rocketry, but increasing the energy
requirements by a factor of two shouldn't by itself be that great
a barrier. The energy to reach orbit is around half the energy for
escape velocity. We were able to reach orbit in the late 1950s, and reach
escape velocity in the mid to late 1960s. So it only took an extra ten
years or so. If energy requirements were doubled because we lived on a
bigger planet, we could reach orbit with late 1960s technology. I would
think that you could then go from orbit to escape velocity by assembling
a rocket in orbit, if nothing else. While space exploration would be
more costly, it would seem to only slow things down by a decade or two.
Hal