nudging them to burn up in the atmosphere is much more doable
julysfire@lemmy.world 1 week ago
What are the space laws for if we nudge it into the sun?
demonsword@lemmy.world 1 week ago
julysfire@lemmy.world 1 week ago
What are the space laws for if we nudge it into the sun?
nudging them to burn up in the atmosphere is much more doable
luciferofastora@feddit.org 1 week ago
Fun fact: pushing things into the sun is really difficult. Short version: imagine spinning a pendulum, then trying to slow it down, except the pendulum is 100kg (200lbs) and moving at 87 Mach.
Long version:
Anything launching from earth will have a significant orbital velocity around the sun by virtue of starting at the earth’s own velocity (~30km/s, about 67000 mph). That velocity makes it hard to actually reach the sun.
Consider that even the sun’s gravity isn’t enough to pull in the earth at that speed. Simply applying thrust towards the sun would have to amount to a significant portion of the sun’s gravity to make a noticeable difference.
So to reach the sun, you’d ideally have to get rid of that excess orbital velocity instead. That requires a lot of force, to put it mildly. That kind of force requires powerful boosters and a lot of fuel. Of course, getting those engines and that fuel up there also takes powerful engines and a lot of fuel. But the larger the rocket, the heavier it’ll be, so it’ll require even more fuel…
There’s a phenomenon dubbed the “Tyranny of the Rocket Equation”. It describes the problem that, at some point, the extra weight required to make a rocket more powerful is greater than the extra power it provides. That basically puts a limit on how strong a given engine can get. There’s a lot of work being done on getting them to be more efficient, so that limit is getting higher, but the bottom line is:
It would require an immense amount of resources to slow an object enough to toss it into the sun, and more resources to get them to that object in the first place.
Physics is a cruel mistress and a mean spoilsport.