I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason why we haven’t done this yet. Too expensive? Would launching it into the sun cause the smoke (if there is even smoke in space) to find its way back to Earth, therefore polluting the air?

This is an incredibly stupid question.

  • @Feathercrown@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    9
    edit-2
    27 days ago

    No, but it’s going too fast sideways. It would miss the sun. You need to slow it down by the same apeed that Earth is moving, stopping its sideways motion and letting it drop into the sun.

    Edit: I like making diagrams. Red is the trajectory you’re expecting. Blue is the Earth’s motion, which adds to that red arrow. Purple is the resulting actual movement of the trash rocket.

    • HobbitFoot
      link
      fedilink
      English
      227 days ago

      But do you need to slow it down all the way? Can’t you just slow it down enough to get the ball in an elliptical orbit where the trash ball gets very close to the ball of plasma?

      • @Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        627 days ago

        The problem is slowing it down to any speed that would end up with it dropping into the sun is going to take more effort and be more difficult than firing it out of the solar system. It isn’t practical.

      • @DeLacue@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        427 days ago

        Space is big. It’s so big that our tiny ape brains have a hard time conceiving of how big it is. The sun is actually (despite it’s size) a relatively small target and is very very far away. Now the more delta-V you burn to slow the trash down the smaller its orbit around the sun will be. But that orbit starts enormous. So to get that purple line near the sun you do need to slow down almost the whole way, just to get it close.