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>Is it because we can just yeet waste substances towards the sun? It is actually quite expensive to get to the sun.
by colechristensen 3y ago
>Is it because we can just yeet waste substances towards the sun?
It is actually quite expensive to get to the sun.
- stavros 3y agoHow come? Don't you "just" have to escape the earth's gravity?
- Ekaros 3y agoOrbital mechanics, Earth does not fall to Sun because it is going around Sun pretty fast. To drop in Sun you have to lose this velocity. And there is no mentionable drag. Kinda similar how satellites around Earth need to go fast too to stay up. Go fast enough and you get out, but you are still stuck with sun.
- NamTaf 3y agoTo expand on and put numbers to this: to escape the solar system from Earth, you need to add about 17 km/s on top of the energy you start with by working from Earth's orbital energy. Earth is going about 30 km/s around the Sun, which helps quite a lot! However, this also means that to hit the Sun, you need to remove more or less all of the energy that Earth starts you with. This is the key insight - if you do a bit too much or a bit too little, it slingshots around the Sun (getting close to it but not going into it) and stays in orbit rather than landing in the Sun.
- colechristensen 3y agoNope. You’re in orbit around the sun too. You have to modify your solar orbit so the short axis of your ellipse is close enough to fall in with atmospheric drag.
- LoganDark 3y agoYou don't have to get to the sun. They said "towards" the sun.
- rini17 3y agoThen that will become a piece of orbital debris, just on solar orbit. Unless you can accelerate it when it is near sun and thus yeet it away from solar system. Doubt that's cost effective either.