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#helium#mass#escape#velocity#size#times#rocket#need#years#earth

Discussion (12 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

WillAdamsabout 3 hours ago
Is it wrong that I was hoping for something along the lines of:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-would-we-know...

except where they are noting how helium is being allowed to escape and not being captured as was previously done by the now shut down U.S. National Helium Reserve.

mapsedge28 minutes ago
Only 880,000 years at our current average speed. Mind blowing, that.
teeray29 minutes ago
Rocky, you say question?
westurnerabout 1 hour ago
There is a market shortage of helium but shouldn't be:

There's also helium in methane, but unfortunately few places crack out the helium from natural gas.

TIL Helium kills Kudzu and powers fusion power plants.

mapsedge30 minutes ago
> Helium kills Kudzu

That right there is reason enough to try to synthesize it in massive quantities.

ck2about 2 hours ago
wow 50 light years is indeed "nearby" in relative terms

nearly 6x the size of earth though, good luck trying to launch a probe off that surface

NASA has a neat "exoplanet catalog" which is about to leap in size next few years with new telescopes and techniques

* https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/lhs-1140-b/

pixl97about 2 hours ago
6x time size (diameter?) or 6 times the mass. Evidently the Earth used to be much larger in size but not mass because of large amounts of trapped hydrogen/helium. It's since leaked from the crust and been blown off into space.
ck2about 2 hours ago
the catalog says 6.38x mass in one place and 5.6x mass in another

they must be able to calculate mass from orbital physics?

so you'd need a rocket 6x the size of SaturnV or whatever they are using for Artemis to escape it and most of that rocket is to lift the weight of the fuel for said rocket so it might be physically impossible to build such a creature at current level of tech

(might be yet another angle to "why no ETs" unless they are WAY more advanced)

inigyouabout 2 hours ago
√(G × mass÷radius) [escape velocity] = v_e × ln(m_0 ÷ m_f) [Tsiolkovsky]

Impossible to tell how much extra mass you need but it's exponential. Adding a unit of v_e [effective exhaust velocity] to escape velocity means you need 2.717 times as much fuel in an ideal rocket.

Earth escape velocity is 11000m/s ignoring atmosphere (which is not ignorable). If the new planet is 6x mass and 2x radius then √3 times escape velocity (about 1.73) would be about 8000m/s extra velocity which is about 3 times a random v_e which means you need about a 25 times bigger rocket. Ignoring the denser atmosphere which makes it even worse.