Question: **EDIT:**

Calculations were incorrect, the earth in my comic is not 5.8x larger, it is 2.4x larger. Its surface area is 5.8x larger but the diameter is 2.4x larger.

Anyway

I'm working on a comic that is set in an alternate earth that is 2.4x larger than the real world in an effort to incorporate numerous fictional locations that could not fit on a real-world map due to their sizes.

I am wondering if earth that is 2.4x larger would slow down human progress to a significant degree due to the fact that travel times would be extended, thus slowing trade, immigration, and colonialism. 

This comic aims to be set in a modern world albeit on a larger Earth. The USA still exists but it's a much larger country. New Jersey, for example, is now the size of England. Likewise, the repercussions of this larger earth may inhibit the USA from ever coming into existence. 

If the answers result in any conflict with the goals of the comic, I may just resort to pure fantasy but it will be fun to learn how this stuff works regardless.

Answer: 
I would imagine a slower pace in the beginning but later it would catch up very quickly and then exceed our current earth by far.

In the initial stone age, more available land to keep surviving with a hunter / gatherer lifestyle means less incentive to develop agriculture.

Later as agriculture is discovered, more available land means longer time until sufficient population density is reached to have large cities.

Once you reach the Renaissance era, the pace would still be slower because the larger oceans are harder / impossible to travel.

However eventually they would reach the industrial age, possibly much later but I see no reason why they wouldn't eventually get there as conflicts / trade drive knowledge forward.

I d say that once that giant earth reaches the industrial age, growth would be much faster.

They would zip past the current age much faster, with way more intense globalization and sheer higher number of researchers boosting research to levels way above ours.

Imagine where we would be if earth population was 40 billion instead 10B. We d already have cured cancer, mastered cold fusion, travelled to Mars etc.. with 5.8x ressources poured into R&D
I always wonder why people ended up in Australia 50,000 years ago, when the world was almost empty. If Australia had been 5.8 times further away from the cradle in North Africa I'm sure humankind would have ended up there all the same. Not because scarcity dictated it but because they could.

Sedentarism was not driven by the first agriculturers being crowded out of the hunter-gatherer civilization. European states colonized because they could, not because they needed to.