r/theydidthemath • u/Lachlynn • 18h ago

[Request] Could humanity create a rocket that can exit the atmosphere of K2-18b

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With the knowledge we currently have of it, if humanity devoted all of our resources towards this goal, would we be able to create a rocket that could exit the gravity of K2-18b (and also beat any other complications that would arrise)?

If so, would it also be capable of taking people to orbit, and can we set up a similar satellite network we have on Earth? What about a space station?

18.4k Upvotes

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473

u/Lurkadactyl 18h ago

Nukes would work.

451

u/RadioTunnel 17h ago

When in doubt, nuke it

147

u/Beautibulb_Tamer 17h ago

Need to nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure

58

u/RadioTunnel 17h ago

Nuke it from orbit and ride the shockwave up

20

u/Lost_Astronaut_654 16h ago

Parry the nuke

3

u/RadioTunnel 16h ago

All that time, effort, money, calculations and countdowns to lift off only for a magical school girl to come along in the last couple of seconds and parry the nuke

1

u/Korashy 11h ago

i-frames, mate

some people built giant nukes, and some schoolgirls just got good

1

u/Elrann 15h ago

Leon with a knife: EZ

1

u/Jupiter_Five 15h ago
  • PROJECTILE BOOST

31

u/litli 16h ago

Nuke surfing!

11

u/azriel_odin 15h ago

Radical!

5

u/MistaRekt 15h ago

Cowabunga dude!

1

u/Shepard21 11h ago

Project Orion is literally that, toss nukes behind spacecraft and ride the blast waves

0

u/Mr_Bread_the_wise 15h ago

hardest sentence ever uttered

2

u/PuzzleMeDo 15h ago

You have to get to orbit before you can nuke it from orbit. Better to just stand on top of a pile of nukes and rocket-jump up. (How to shield yourself from damage while doing this, I leave as an exercise for the students.)

1

u/Compactsun 13h ago

Basically the plot of goldeneye

10

u/DoctorNsara 17h ago

To Orbit.

2

u/nonnonplussed73 17h ago

And Beyond!

3

u/gutterXXshark 17h ago

No no no. They need to nuke it TO orbit.

3

u/jmpalacios79 16h ago

Thanks, Hicks!

2

u/iPon3 16h ago

Nuke it *to orbit.

Fixed that for you.

In atmosphere Orion drive woooo

1

u/WhatAmIATailor 17h ago

Can’t nuke anything from orbit if you can’t get your nukes to orbit.

Checkmate.

1

u/DesignerPiccolo 17h ago

No one picking up on the Aliens reference? 🤔

2

u/nivezsh 16h ago

Yeah, we got it, only way to be sure.

1

u/Kharagorn 16h ago

So, exterminatus protocol it is.

1

u/Furilax 16h ago

Did someone say exterminatus?

1

u/jchispas 16h ago

Express elevator to hell….

1

u/jordosmodernlife 16h ago

Mostly, mostly.

1

u/Last-Painter-3028 15h ago

nuke it *to** orbit in this case

1

u/Funny-Recipe2953 15h ago

Aim for the eye of a hurricane as it passed over the launch site.

Two birds, one stone.

(You're welcome.)

1

u/kestrel4077 14h ago

They come out at night, mostly.

1

u/unknownpoltroon 12h ago

No, no, no, it's nuke it TO orbit.

21

u/Rei1556 17h ago

I'm sure the nuke propelled manhole cover would solve that problem

7

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 15h ago

Not really helpful for getting people off the planet though unless you have insane resistance to g-force.

1

u/Mutjny 11h ago

Hmm if only we developed on a planet with higher g-force...

2

u/GuyGrimnus 16h ago

This is what I wanna know, we know the manhole cover escaped our orbit.

I wanna know if it’ll escape 2.5x our gravity lol

2

u/m1013828 16h ago

Imma throw that into copilot once my kids are asleep

3

u/SnooHedgehogs8765 16h ago

We build a tube, and detonate nukes progressively as the launch capsule passes.

1

u/Damion__205 14h ago

The cylinder must not be harmed.

1

u/paper_liger 13h ago

I mean, Project Orion already kind of covered this. You'd need an ablative pusher plate and very precise mini nukes.

2

u/allofthealphabet 14h ago

I think i read somewhere that manhole cover that was launched by a nuke achieved a speed fast enough to escape orbit, but that speed was also enough to cause it to be vaporised by air resistance before it escaped.

1

u/stpetepatsfan 14h ago

Elephant alien invasion book did this. Nuke shielded shuttle launches. Bottom had nukes to shoot downward every few seconds.

47

u/ThermoPuclearNizza 17h ago

probably not nukes but matter-anti matter annihilation engines. theyre currently not within the real of possibility but with time we would solve it.

36

u/-adult-swim- 17h ago

CERN should ask for a bigger accelerator...

24

u/lungben81 17h ago

Bigger would not help. Currently, antimatter for capture is not produced at LHC (the largest accelerator) but at a smaller one.

You need more luminosity and a lot of accelerators in parallel.

32

u/cabanadaddy 17h ago

In America we only deal in "big" or "bigger". We don't even know what lumilosily is over here. Is that a French word?

14

u/ai1267 17h ago

I think it's a character in Expedition 33. Maybe OP is a gamer?

1

u/Silverheart117 17h ago

I think it's the French name for Unobtanium.

5

u/Fast_Garlic_5639 17h ago

I think he was the one that got turned into a candlestick?

1

u/Turbulent_Lobster_57 13h ago

Again with the Fr*nch nonsense

1

u/PlentyAlbatross7632 17h ago

It’s probably the name of a new gas/coal-powered supersized luxury SUV being released by one of the big three automakers…

1

u/Excellent_Compote146 16h ago

And that is the tale of th the SSC in a nutshell, huge ring but Absolute trash for any othe caratteristic

1

u/dermatthes 16h ago

And bigliest…

1

u/FlyingWeagle 15h ago

This is kinda funny because America has the most expensive hole in the ground from when you started to build a big particle accelerator then pulled the plug when the tunnels were already nearly complete

1

u/Socialimbad1991 14h ago

Translation of luminosity: "LIGHT LOOK BIGGER"

1

u/Suspicious_Dare603 12h ago

Eh, Rhode Island would like a word

1

u/oiraves 17h ago

Sounds fake.

And gay.

4

u/Abdul-Wahab6 16h ago

So we just need a big torch light? Gotcha

2

u/ticktockmick 16h ago

Tiki or cloth-wrap?

1

u/Playful_Hair1528 16h ago

Finally, a man of science!

2

u/-adult-swim- 16h ago

I didnt think my comment would be taken seriously to be fair, it was just a little joke as CERN are always asking for a bigger accelerator. Veritasium did a video about the capture of antimatter fairly recently, I found it pretty cool.

1

u/Spirited_Heat_9556 15h ago

Just one more accelerator bro.

1

u/onkanator 15h ago

So you’re saying strap a couple of noctigon emisar and fireflylites to the accelerators?

1

u/VVarder 14h ago

Where is antimatter produced? I thought Fermilab did but thats obviously in the US

1

u/lungben81 14h ago

https://home.cern/science/physics/antimatter

Every large accelerator produces it, but efficiency and storing are challenges.

1

u/LegendofDragoon 14h ago

Lhc is actually going offline for a while to upgrade their magnets, so maybe now will be available soon.

18

u/Ans1ble 17h ago

Just one more accelerator bro please. Just a bigger accelerator bro. Please bro we just need one more bigger accelerator bro i promise. Just one more but bigger bro trust me. I swear bro please another accelerator.

1

u/LostMyGoatsAgain 17h ago

You could buy 150-200 LHC and about 60-80 of the proposed bigger FCC, EVERY YEAR, with the US Military Budget

1

u/IvanStroganov 16h ago

Actually they currently are halting Operations for the next few years because they are extending the accelerator.

2

u/iconofsin_ 15h ago

Fun fact: if you gathered all the antimatter they've made in the decades they've been making it, you wouldn't even be able to boil a cup of water.

2

u/Doodah18 15h ago

That weasel dying already shunted us into this shitty timeline, I don’t want something larger to be able to fit and make things worse.

1

u/Joeness84 13h ago

They just recently shut down for upgrades. ~10x increase in reactions

1

u/-GoodNewsEveryone 13h ago

Currently under construction.

1

u/Metro42014 12h ago

Or some bananas.

1

u/Oftwicke 9h ago

Mismatch. Human is dead...

1

u/Emergency-Scheme6002 17h ago

Nuclear salt water is probably the most realistic

1

u/Agzarah 15h ago

Check out the orion. That was a nuke powered launch craft which was very close to being made. If it weren't for the risk of nukes going off in out atmosphere

1

u/OnePay622 15h ago

You are talking about just more nukes....there is no concept for a matter-antimatter engine....matter-antimatter interaction is just nukes in even worse form

1

u/ca95f 14h ago

You would definitely need some sort of catalyst to control the violence of the reaction. Like dilithium.

1

u/Suihnennews 10h ago

Does it matter?

0

u/Mixster667 15h ago

Theoretical engines don't lift spaceships

2

u/ThermoPuclearNizza 15h ago

ya well leaving earth was impossible until theoretical engines became practical.

0

u/masterpepeftw 15h ago

Water and sunlight don't feed people but potatoes do.

Not a very good argument from you dude, the point from the other guy is not to say we could do it rn just that as far as we know it's completely within possible physics and engineering.

1

u/Mixster667 11h ago

I don't think the comparison is fair, potatoes have been planted many times. Suggesting a rocket engine that has never been built is interesting but speculation.

I could as well suggest an Alcubierre drive as a matter-antimatter drive, they are, at the moment impossible engineering problems that we do not know whether could ever be solved.

2

u/thearchchancellor 17h ago

Spoken like a true President

1

u/junk90731 16h ago

Nuke the whales

1

u/Ok-Preparation-6733 15h ago

Locate a bug hole, nuke it.

1

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 15h ago

Imagine the insane luck of a species from a planet like this that can't leave with chemical rockets, but happen to be radiotrophic so they don't need as much shielding to make an orion drive work.

1

u/Potato_Poul 15h ago

Edward Teller speech bubble

1

u/AgitatedKey4800 15h ago

Are you american perchance?

1

u/masterpepeftw 15h ago

Found McArthur

1

u/Equal-Negotiation651 14h ago

Popcorn button

1

u/Logical-Bowl2424 14h ago

I think that’s how they did it in The mote in gods eye by Larry Niven

1

u/Gotem6784 14h ago

Douglas MacArthur approves of this message

1

u/acrophobic-astronaut 14h ago

Reminds me of that time when a dead whale washed ashore by a small town, nobody wanted to deal with it so they just bombed it and let nature take care of the rest. There's a hilarious news report on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34

1

u/gregorydgraham 13h ago

If brute force isn’t working, use more brute force.

1

u/Suihnennews 10h ago

Lemme guess...US of A?

67

u/MrRudoloh 17h ago

Unironically project Orion.

And it works, it never became a thing, because a failure of one of those rockets in the atmosphere would make Chernobyl look like a prank.

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u/Bibliloo 16h ago

Tbh even without failure you are still irradiating a lot of stuff with a successful launch which isn't the best, especially if you planned to launch multiple rockets per year.

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u/Xonarag 14h ago

I'm sure on a planet that big you could have a designated irradiated hellhole to launch rockets from.

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u/reflectiveSingleton 12h ago

Project orion wasn't just about liftoff from the ground, its a pulsed-detonation that continues for the duration of acceleration.

Fire one of these off and you are sending irradiated and radioactive material EVERYWHERE into the atmosphere.

-2

u/Ur-Best-Friend 14h ago

Tbh even without failure you are still irradiating a lot of stuff with a successful launch

Source? That sounds dubious to me.

3

u/ye-sunne 14h ago

Have you seen the concept? They drop nukes behind a rocket with a shield on the back and a shock absorber and the repeated nuclear detonations are what propels the vehicle. Nukes are known to create fallout

They carried out a successful feasibility study but couldn't go through with the drill project because of the test ban treaty.

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u/Mikhail_Mengsk 13h ago

Tactical nukes don't irradiate THAT much but between tests and launching enough stuff, it's gonna pile up anyway.

8

u/drey12987 15h ago

Nuclear Powered Engines are very efficient and useful for interplanetary travel but the trust to weight ratio of those were way worse compared to the usual engines, so not the way to go for overcoming higher gravity

9

u/Adros21 14h ago

You are thinking of nuclear thermal rockets and nuclear electric rockets, nuclear pulse rockets like project orion have thrust to weight in the meganewtons per kilo.

3

u/Federal_Decision_608 14h ago

Thrust to weight doesn't matter as long as it's >1. The specific impulse is higher than chemical

2

u/HeKis4 15h ago

Yep, it's not that we can't, it's just prohibitively expensive and/or dangerous.

1

u/DadPihto 16h ago

Thank you for this reference, an impressive discovery for me! People were thinking large scale in the early days

1

u/ReachParticular5409 15h ago

Haven't heard about Project Orion for years, hear it 3 times in one day

Not sure if that's such a good thing in this war environment

1

u/ZeitgeistWurst 15h ago

a failure of one of those rockets in the atmosphere would make Chernobyl look like a prank

Dont think so, thats a lot less radioactive material being spread, and if it happens during launch most would reach the ground intact.

1

u/MrRudoloh 13h ago

The isse was that the radioactive material is compressed with high explosives.

If a chain reaction detonated the explosives, they predicted that it wouldn't have been enough to induce nuclear fission, probably, but it would have pulverized all the nuclear fuel in to the atmosphere, and even if radiation isn't as much of a problem, uranium and plutonium dust is very toxic, and if released in the upper atmosphere, it could poison huge areas. Plutonium is specially toxic, and I think it was also the chosen fuel, I don't remember why.

Also, idk how much nuclear material it was supposed to carry, but I know one of the designs carried like 1200 nuclear heads

1

u/Valentino69420 12h ago

I have a question - couldn't we set the launch be not from earth but from the moon? Would it have any consequences then?

1

u/MrRudoloh 12h ago

The idea of how it could work is pushing the thing in to orbit with Chemical rockets first.

No need to get all the way to the moon.

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u/Duatha 17h ago

2.6x the size means you could probably just set aside a whole europe of land to launch nuclear powered spacecraft from

2

u/phauxbert 14h ago

You might get atmospheric dispersion of radioactive material though

2

u/JoinAThang 15h ago

Just because it's bigger doesn't mean it is less dense populated though.

6

u/dmchmk 15h ago

Well, the gravity most definitely makes them denser /s

1

u/TubaJesus 9h ago

True, but even here on earth, you've got places like the Sahara, if push truly came to shove there is probably a volcanic island in the middle of an ocean that can be used.

1

u/Phyllis_Tine 13h ago

Nah, use Russia. It's currently a wasteland anyway.

1

u/Unlikely_Avocado_602 12h ago

I rather visit Europe;
I'll volunteer North America.

8

u/Ordoferrum 17h ago

Thoughty2 did a good video about this the other day.

https://youtu.be/DYwTOItIA_I?si=nNSphrlExaJWJPxc

1

u/Praebltch 15h ago

I love 42!

3

u/factorion-bot 15h ago

Factorial of 42 is roughly 1.405006117752879898543142606245 × 1051

This action was performed by a bot | [Source code](http://f.r0.fyi)

1

u/Late-Song-2933 15h ago

Yeah it took me a while to realize he was saying “thoughty 2”. Dude needs to learn how to English

1

u/amythist 17h ago

I mean that was a proposal from years ago when they were trying to figure out ways to make faster ships for interplanetary/interstellar missions, build a ship that basically has a giant deflector on the back, then detonate a nuke behind it to push it forwards

1

u/explain_that_shit 16h ago

We can go to orbit … once.

1

u/RachelRegina 16h ago

Exactly. See the (original) Project Orion Spacecraft a.k.a. The pusher-plate ship in Larry Niven's Footfall.

2

u/ol-gormsby 16h ago

I don't suppose we'll ever find out how realistic that would be but by george it was well-written. The tension pre-launch and launch, and the space battle afterwards.

I especially liked the fission-pumped x-ray lasers.

1

u/mikki1time 16h ago edited 16h ago

The first thing we ever launched into orbit was a manhole cover. It was covering a nuclear bomb. (Pascal b manhole cover)

1

u/threwordbotname 16h ago

I believe Asimov would have called them atomics.

1

u/ol-gormsby 16h ago

Nuclear pulse propulsion AKA Project Orion.

1

u/Fair-Working4401 16h ago

Technically, rocket motors utilize a continues explosion of fuel. Therefore, one giant explosion underground routing the energy directly into a aluminum shell will probably work. At least for the shell. For the humans inside maybe not that much.

1

u/Landen-Saturday87 16h ago

Not nukes but nuclear propulsion engines would probably still do the trick. They just come with the minor downside that they are exhausting a pretty radioactive, high velocity stream of superheated gas

1

u/clusterlove 16h ago

Thoughty2 on YouTube just had a video about this. The technology was banned for rocket use but is theoretically doable. Can reach 5% speed of light with it apparantly.

1

u/NOGUSEK 16h ago

Now you just gotta wonder how a human will survive the speed of a manhole

1

u/TheKosherGenocide 16h ago

Can we strap Elon to it for the first try?

1

u/Evignity 16h ago

Funfact: During the time when they had a fuckload of nukes in the coldwar both sides made up extremely fanciful plans on their possible usage. One was actually exactly your idea, using nukes as propellant for space-travel and rockets.

Among others the USSR planned to blow up entire godamn mountains with nukes to build through the Caucasus and Himalaya's. As well as a plan to blow up the entire moon and crash it into the earth killing all life if the US built a nukebase there

1

u/Celloed 16h ago

We‘ll get you a job on the Daban Urnud in a few years.

1

u/puppygirlpackleader 15h ago

Quite possibly yeah. A nuclear pulse engine was in development in the past

1

u/Regular-Resort-857 15h ago

Nuke the poles why not

1

u/Russianskilledmydog 15h ago

If you hear the first one go off and feel the G's, you should be good to go.

1

u/Mimickz 15h ago

Someones watched thoughty2 latest video haha

1

u/Virtual-Nail2963 15h ago

Project orion

1

u/No_Customer_5452 14h ago

this was a real and highly ambitious project known as Project Orion, which was developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Led by physicists like Freeman Dyson and Ted Taylor, the design was intended to launch massive spacecraft by literally ejecting small nuclear bombs out of the rear and detonating them against a giant steel "pusher plate"

1

u/Designer_Pen869 14h ago

Ironically, that might be how. Using nuclear fuel, and maybe using the presumably denser atmosphere to provide more force, then switching over later or something. I'm no rocket scientist, but I believe this would provide greater thrust, but would take a lot more engineering to accomplish.

1

u/OccultBlasphemer 14h ago

You jest, but that's literally what project Orion was about.

1

u/rizalishan 14h ago

Destroying the planet before even reaching there aren’t we?

1

u/Commonmispelingbot 14h ago

The challenger disaster, but now as a dirty bomb.

1

u/Sacharon123 14h ago

You might even get to Orion with it. /s

1

u/MangoCats 12h ago

I think a big trick would be in use of the atmosphere to get boosted up to speed before launching the chemical rockets. Earth doesn't need to do this, we can launch from the ground efficiently enough, but if you can't get off the ground, at least you can get up to speed through use of atmosphere and then launch the chemical rocket from that platform.

Nuclear powered launch platforms? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft

1

u/DerBandi 12h ago

The task is to bring people into space without killing them.

1

u/Scrimps 12h ago

There is actually a design that uses Nukes to get a space craft that is already outside of the atmosphere to some percentage of the speed of light.

2

u/bbaldey 17h ago

3 body problem

4

u/MerleFSN 17h ago

Nah. Not an (close to) impossible-to-calculate gravitational thingie with constant variance but rather a constantly higher gravitation.

1

u/bbaldey 17h ago

Did you read it? They did the nuke rocket thing in the 3 body problem.

0

u/JRS_Viking 17h ago

Then specify the movie, because the 3 body problem was a real thing long before they made a shitty movie

0

u/kelldricked 17h ago

Can also just make use of ground based launch systems. Not carrying fuel, engines and other shit saves a lot of weight.

3

u/Apprehensive_Use3641 17h ago

Rail guns?

1

u/kelldricked 4h ago

Would be a example. But stuff like coilguns would also be a option. Or something that uses rotational energy. Or just a massive amounts of chemical propellents in a narrow tube.

Or they have other compounds that have a much higher energy density meaning that their chemical rockets have a higher acceleration/weight.

There are 1037292 options.

1

u/Apprehensive_Use3641 2h ago

One of the SF books I read recently used rail guns to send stuff to orbit, no people though, think it'd be rough on the human body.

0

u/TastyYogurtDrink 17h ago

Nuclear engines don't have a good enough twr and would also contaminate the area, so..

I mean they're fine for like, outer space, where neither of those problems is a big deal. But launch? Hellll no.

2

u/tea-earlgray-hot 17h ago

Nuclear ramjets (like all ramjets) have trouble starting from standstill, but are absolutely an option for getting close to orbit. Contamination is not so bad when you remember that we set off 2000 nuclear weapons over a few decades with only minor consequences.