Utterly fascinated by dinosaurs—want to launch them to space
Lately I’ve been watching Prehistoric Planet. I’ve always been fascinated by dinosaurs but the show’s visuals and explanations are so good that they help you get a sense of how the dinosaurs might have spent their day-to-day lives. And now I’m even more curious about them.
The second episode of the second season is focused on dinosaurs in India, some 90 million years ago when it was an isolated island not connected to the Asian mainland. Many lived in the harsh volcanic landscape of the Deccan plateau, with the top predator being an Indian T-rex rather aptly named Rajasaur. [Raja is Hindi for King]
Pterosaurs could fly, T-rexes could swim, and massive Titanosaurs could walk across active volcanic lands. Think about it. Dinosaurs existed in and dominated so many different environments on Earth for almost 200 million years. That’s close to 100 times longer than we humans have dominated the planet. What’s not to like?
Well, ultimately what killed them was a giant rock from space. And that, my dear friends, is also why you need a space program.
Not that evolution is necessarily convergent on conscious intelligence—as far as I know—but imagine if dinosaurs had evolved to have intelligence like us and could build rockets. Firstly, their rockets would be huge, considering the average size and weight of dinosaurs compared to humans. Dinosaurs might hit the limit of chemical rockets faster than us purely because of that.
Of course, what their rockets might look and be like would depend a lot on their socioeconomic structures but here’s some food for thought. The most powerful rocket in operation today, NASA’s SLS, can lift a mass of nearly 95,000 kilograms to Earth orbit. You’d need that for the titanosaurs as each one weighed some 70,000 kilograms. Now, cramming their 37-meter long body in the 8.4-meter fairing of the SLS is another matter. As is fitting an environmental control and life support system on the rocket for the dinosaur. So maybe the larger dinosaurs were doomed regardless.