this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
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I think Mars, assuming you terraform it, would be pretty close to that on both counts. Space planes might still be difficult, but the delta V is much lower and Olympus Mons would pretty much sit above the atmosphere.
Holy shit, I hadn't considered that you could use Olympus Mons as a launch site cause it sticks so high up.
The best part about it is that it's an extremely gradual slope completely unlike the mountain ranges on Earth, so you could haul stuff up there on trucks or trains easily.
The problem is you can't have mountains like that on tectonically active planets (a mountain that big on earth would sink into the mantle), which is kind of a prequisite for a long-term magnetosphere so its unfortunately not something a species could likely ever have except as a result of terraforming a world like mars and setting up some kind of artificial magnetosphere.
Is there a lower density limit for having a magnetosphere though? A habitable planet with 1.5x earth radius and the same mass would be much easier to get off of.
I guess that could work? Earth is actually the densest planet in the solar system so our baseline mass > size ratio might actually be a bit abnormal.
I was sure you were bullshitting, but no. Its true.
Iron and nickel core + enough mass for gravity to start compress the planed and we are just little more dense than Mercury.
Our core is also just huge, the outer core is larger than the moon and mercury.
If that's true, how did Olympus mons get there in the first place? I thought it was a volcano.
Mars was geologically active but its core cooled.