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CellBioGuy comments on Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Mulling the Fermi paradox and escape velocity-- the higher a species' home planet's escape velocity, the harder it is to get off the planet. I think there's an escape velocity which is so high that chemical rocket fuels just don't have enough energy.
I have no idea whether there's a plausible relationship between the likelihood of technological species and the escape velocity of their planet, except that I doubt that there'd be intelligent life on planets without atmosphere. Or am I being too parochial?
Thoughts about technological species and escape velocity?
Constant density planet: Escape velocity scales with the cube root of mass.
Real planets: Goes up faster than that since the inside crunches down as mass increases. Also the geology could start getting... interesting at large masses due to the whole square cube law thing and rapidly increasing primordial heat of formation.