It’s not obvious that this professor of aerospace engineering knows that the sun is the hardest place to get to in the solar system. Escape from the solar system is easier.
37 thoughts on “Launching Things Into The Sun”
Comments are closed.
It’s not obvious that this professor of aerospace engineering knows that the sun is the hardest place to get to in the solar system. Escape from the solar system is easier.
Comments are closed.
Much easier to shoot it into Jupiter. Per Jack Handey, it’s an enemy planet.
“Much easier to shoot it into Jupiter”
And if you have a woody to launch it into the Sun you can use Jupiter’s gravity to swing it (the Jupiter probe back toward the Sun)
Hey, this has already been done by the Ulysses Mission
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/ulysses
“Hey, this has already been done by the Ulysses Mission”
Yes. I believe that you aim the probe at Jupiter’s poles allow Jupiter gravity to swing the probe out of the plane of the ecliptic into a polar orbit around the Sun. A pretty wide arc; probably not that difficult to use thrusters on the probe to make said orbit intercept the sun itself.
He does entertain everything except the delta vee elephant in the room.
As I recall, the DV to reach the sun from earth is around 60kps. Definitely the hardest place to reach in the solar system, even with grav assists.
However, I’m a bit more worried by the statement that the earth’s influence ends at 22,000 miles. Perhaps they’ve never heard that the moon orbits the earth?
Well, pedantically speaking, the Moon and Earth technically co-orbit the Sun…
But it is kind of a technicality that the Moon has the orbit it does that can be said to be Sol-centric.
You have to nearly zero earths velocity. Or at least create an elliptical orbit with the heliogee inside the surface of the sun.
Perihelion. Wrong terminology. If I win the mega millions, I am buying the board new software that can edit posts.
The average Sun-Earth distance is 92,955,807 miles, so the Earth travels 2*Pi*92,955,807 miles in each year (one orbit). That means we are traveling at 584.06E+6 miles/(356 days*86400 seconds/day) = 18.52 miles/second, or 97,788 ft/sec. To go directly to the Sun, you’d have to have a rocket that could have pretty much that whole velocity as Vinfinity, i,e, the leftover after escaping the Earth’s gravitation field, directed opposite the Earth’s velocity vector. So the injection burn from LEO would have to produce a velocity of SQRT(97,000^2 +36,000^2) = ~103,500 ft/sec. That’s on top of the ideal delta V of about 30,000 ft/sec to reach LEO. Orion could have done that, at the cost of contaminating our radiation belts so badly that no human could ever get into space again. No chemical rocket could ever do the job.
Someone is sure to correct me on this, but I somehow had the impression that this could be done with a lot less delta-v by thrusting into a highly elliptical orbit, coasting to the aphelion, and then applying a much lower delta-v to enter a skinnier elliptical orbit that plunges into the Sun?
Or the boosting into this higher orbit could supplemented by planetery encounters for gravity assist for even more savings?
Energetically, what you describe is the same as what I did. Tim’s comment actually gives the correct approach, which is to shoot out to Jupiter, doing a fly-by of the “leading edge” (the side of Jupiter in the direction of its motion), and exiting the Jovian gravitational field in the opposite direction of Jupiter’s motion. Arthur C. Clarke described the technique in one or another of his mountain of books and articles, some time ago.
I’ll note that there’s two relatively efficient ways to drop stuff into the Sun: solar sails and gravity assists. Basically, you don’t need to shed all the delta-v, you just need to get your object within about 400,000 miles of the Sun’s center. Solar braking will stop it real fast even if it has high delta v.
Garbage of Earth’s global satellite market, is satellites that don’t work anymore, and satellites smashed into pieces which hit other satellites in orbit. Spent rocket stages. And garbage is ISS and other space stations make. And ISS will be de-orbited burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, and the garbage it’s crew makes, is likewise burnt up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Garbage of Apollo program- are museum articles.
Garbage of Mars settlement, would be used spacesuits, and vehicles that are broken. Mars atmosphere, like Earth’s atmosphere could incinerate waste due to it’s velocity. And a city on Mars will need to manage human waste- have a sewer system. Sewer systems were once a big problem for Earth’s cities- it’s terms causing diseases and plagues.
One can’t breath Mars air, directly, so any foul smell in air is not an issue. With Mars one will mine the sky, like on Earth we mine our sky. One reason to mine Mars sky is to get nitrogen, and it’s a same one reason we mine Earth’s sky [to get nitrogen -and oxygen and argon, and other gases].
One place where on could have a lot garbage is Venus orbit- assuming billions of people are living there.
And if nothing else, garbage could incinerated in the Venus sky.
“Sewer systems were once a big problem for Earth’s cities- it’s terms causing diseases and plagues.”
They were also used to generate profits.
You are all completely incorrect. Launching things to the center of the sun is literally the simplest destination to reach. Just this morning, I launched all of my rubbish from breakfast into the sun. This is just another example of using an incomplete model, limited to standard orbital dynamics. The only downside to sub disposal trajectories is the transit time.
For example, when I release my trash over the trash bin it began its journey to the interior of sol. For the next 5 billion years, it will be in roughly the same orbit. But 5 billion years from now the sun will expand, engulfing the trash and providing the needed aerobraking to move the trash towards the sun’s interior.
So really, all we need to do is provide for 5 billion years transit time, and then the delta v required goes to zero!
For a second there I thought your process was going to involve a giant magnifying glass or Fresnel lens.
No delta-V required, or transit time, other than the speed of light.
Depends on whose model of stellar evolution you are using as to whether the red giant stage (or later asymptotic giant stage) Sun ever gets quite that large.
Part of the problem is that globular clusters are rich enough and old enough to observe near solar mass stars in the different stages of development “ascendeing the red giant branch.”
But these are “low-metal content” (anything heavier than Helium in astrophysics banter) stars, and there isn’t a similar way to verify the evolution of later-born stars like the Sun enriched in “metals” for direct confirmation of the computer simulations. So what kind of red giant the Sun will turn into is a bit speculative.
It’s rather embarrassing to admit, but IIRC, none other than Henry Spencer set me straight on this in sci.space.policy about 30 years ago….
Or on second thought, maybe more like 40 years ago whilst posting using a 24×80 time-share terminal.
It is counter intuitive. You would expect anyone with certain educational backgrounds to have learned this but the vast majority of people wont have learned it and thinking about orbital dynamics just isn’t one of their hobby interests.
It is a lack of exposure, knowing most of the pieces but not putting them all together in the right context, or maybe even intellectual laziness. Explain it to someone and you wont be met with befuddlement but the response, “Oh yeah, that makes sense. Rather simple really.”
The whole article seems horrifically dumb.
Starting with the premise; exactly why do we need to eject mass and material away from the Earth? All that garbage is material that came from the Earth. It may have limited utility to us today as it did maybe a hundred or so years ago. But in that garbage is material that cost us more than a spaceflight to extract, and we may need it again someday.
If you want to get rid of it, why does it need to have a destination? Some decent arguments are made to get it far enough away that it isn’t still garbage the Earth has to deal with. So send it out to deep space like Voyager. Sending it to the sun may seem like a good way to incinerate it, but you can incinerate it here on Earth.
If you must have a destination, send it somewhere useful like the Moon or Mars, so that it can be a resource for developers there.
A better solution is ignoring a space option and focusing on refining our trash into something useful here on Earth. Recycling is a good thing, but so far has required the general public to have an understanding of the utility of various material. The people sourced for this article shows how difficult it is to teach the masses the value of such material. If supposed scientist and engineers don’t know what to do with garbage, then don’t expect the families at home to know how to sort their garbage. However, every day, people across the globe know how to work through tons of overburden to find ounces of high-quality material that is worth, well worth the price of gold. Use that mindset on the piles of garbage.
“Recycling is a good thing, but so far has required the general public to have an understanding of the utility of various material. The people sourced for this article shows how difficult it is to teach the masses the value of such material. If supposed scientist and engineers don’t know what to do with garbage, then don’t expect the families at home to know how to sort their garbage. ”
The problem with recycling is caused by government- and people shouldn’t sort their garbage.
The only basic problem is cost of electrical power, and governments have caused electrical power to be more expensive- but that is not the only thing which governments have done, to limit recycling.
Solar and wind power are not viable on Earth, but a part of why they aren’t viable is due to government involvement.
Solar power is far more viable on Mars, than on Earth surface.
One problem with Earth solar energy used for the electrical grid, is on Earth, one only has about 6 hours of peak solar hours. And on Mars one can have 12 hours or more of solar power per day. So can higher total amount per day [or year] and you get the power for long period- or don’t have average of 18 hours per day of not getting solar power . Or on Mars one has less then an average 12 hours of not solar power per 24 hours.
And grid power costs on Mars should be cheaper than on Earth.
There was this TV mini-series called Earth II, (Roman numerals, not to be confused and even lamer TV series Earth 2).
Earth II is a somewhat Utopian orbiting space colony run by Gary Lockwood of 2001 A Space Odyssey fame, where Tony Franciosa, an actor who appeared in several TV series in that era is The New Kid On The Space Station who stirs things up.
The occupants of station take a possesion of an orbiting nuclear bomb orbited by a rogue nation not observing treaties against such a thing, and the new guy, Tony Franciosa, wants Earth II to keep it and become a nuclear-weapons state, much to the horror of Lockwood and others.
Franciosa puts this question, as is his right as a citizen of Earth II, to a “D and D”, a Discussion and Decision, a sort of closed-circuit TV Town Hall where everyone on the station weighs in, but anticipating the current worries about Internet Misinformation swaying the last election, Earth II has “logic circuits” that caption the TV image and warn when someone is making an emotional appeal or engaged in a cheap debating trick.
Long story short, hijinks ensue, the nuclear weapon is more trouble than it is worth, and Franciosa reluctantly goes along with “launching it in to the Sun.”
Think of the Logic Circuits as a machine-intelligence version of David Muir fact-checking a debate as it is happening. Only the Logic Circuits aren’t intellectually impaired.
That I remember this at all is a testament to a lost childhood. Or to a latent ESP ability that rivals Gary Lockwood’s. Guess I should avoid the galactic negative energy barrier. Would have served the Kelvins right had some of the non-hexagonal-cube transformed humans left aboard went through the change. Interesting that Kirk never mentioned that hazard to them…
But Earth 2 had creatures that popped right out of the soil and snatched you!
And Tim Curry! And that red-tailed hawk screeching at the end of every scene.
Still better than the Roy Scheider submarine show it was cancelled in favor of.
Still better than the Roy Scheider submarine show it was cancelled in favor of.
With that annoying boy wonder that was the prototype for Wesley Crusher…
Well, to be fair, annoying TV Boy Wonders have been around since Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, at least. I didn’t watch enough of the Roy Scheider show to be annoyed by the boy wonder. Was he more irritating than the dolphin? I do remember a scene where the dolphin was diving out of a well in the submarine while it was at depth.
Think of the Logic Circuits as a machine-intelligence version of David Muir fact-checking a debate as it is happening. Only the Logic Circuits aren’t intellectually impaired.
Cool story, bro. Better hope Mr. Machine doesn’t logically fact-check your post as double plus ungood speechcrime.
Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about that Karl. I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error…
The only consumer products worth recycling are metals, specifically aluminum cans and steel from old cars. Everything else costs more to recycle than to make new.
Might run into the same problem elsewhere as we have on Earth, recycling often costs more than building new. I’m not convinced that just because something exists, it has value or potential future value.
It should be a simple opportunity cost evaluation, is launching something into space cheaper and more efficient than trashing it on Earth?
However, what about an exception for nuclear waste? Sure, much of it could be reused here but sending it off planet could realize some intangible benefits in winning over people worried about nuclear waste while also providing tangible benefits in the form of fuel to off world reactors.
It also seems a crime to have the second stage starship
leave the lunar surface.
Sort of like landing a lunar base on lunar surface, and then having the lunar base go back into lunar orbit.
So roughly a starship can reach lunar orbit without refueling in LEO, but land on lunar surface, the starship needs to refuel. And to land lunar surface and then return to lunar orbit, it needs more rocket fuel refueling in LEO.
So Starship is going to land on the Moon without crew, first. So that first Starship doesn’t need to return to lunar orbit.
And it seems with that first lunar Starship landing, one bring a lot payload to lunar surface.
So why bring a unfueled lunar ascent crew vehicle. And next time the Starship can bring the rocket fuel to fill up that lunar ascent crew vehicle, and the starship landed crew can then use that ascent vehicle to return to lunar orbit.
Sounds like my family’s holiday vacation plans when we kids were “away at school”, plans involving multiple cars and modes of transportation.
I know of no lunar ascent vehicle, but such vehicle would be needed to mine lunar water.
And being able to be refueled at lunar surface and in lunar orbit, would make it a reusable lunar descent and ascent vehicle- and thereby being what is needed.
I was searching on TwitterX for a good explanation to retweet but there were just too many posts suggesting to launch trash to the sun to wade through. There was one article that was being passed around by a lot of accounts but it just said launching rockets is expensive.