Guillermo Gonzalez Extends “Privileged Planet” Arguments to Space Travel
BIO-Complexity, Circumstellar Habitable Zone, earth, Exoplanets, fuel, gravity, Guillermo Gonzalez, Industrial Revolution, Jay Richards, NASA, Peggy Whitson, Physics, Earth & Space, rockets, solar system, space travel, super-earths, The Privileged Planet
As outlined in the book The Privileged Planet, by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, the Earth is not only fine-tuned for life, but is also well-designed to allow us to make scientific discoveries. A new BIO-Complexity paper by Guillermo Gonzalez, “The Solar System: Favored for Space Travel,” extends privileged planet arguments to our ability to travel in space. Gonzalez previously summarized some of his arguments here, but it’s worth outlining some of his arguments. Many of the exoplanets that are being discovered are giant “super-earths,” planets with a mass up to 10X Earth’s mass. These planets pose a problem for space travel. As the gravity of a planet increases, so does the amount of fuel that is needed for a rocket to escape the gravity of the planet and reach space. As Gonzalez puts it,…