3 ms·
The problem is not flying into the Sun, it's slowing down to get in an orbit around Mercury.
by bonzini 5y ago
The problem is not flying into the Sun, it's slowing down to get in an orbit around Mercury.
- shadowgovt 5y agoIt's both. The sun is actually pretty expensive to hit from Earth... Earth's orbital velocity around the sun is about 29.78 km/s. Even to fall into the sun, you need to kill most of that (not quite zero is needed, of course, as the sun has a wide radius... But closer to zero than simple Earth escape velocity). The Parker Solar Probe, for example, pulled the trick off of getting a high-eccentricity orbit around the sun by slingshotting Venus seven times (the transfer orbit from Earth to Venus is about 3 km/s delta-v). There's a pretty good overview of the math at the Space stackexchange: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/38612/how-much-less-delta-v-would-it-take-to-reach-the-sun-using-venus-and-earth-flyby https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/38612/how-much-les...