Why Don't We Shoot Garbage Into The Sun?

DigitalGriffin said:
Even if we could get a space elevator working, what keeps things in orbit is the horizontal velocity. (You know that pesky centrifugal force equation) g = .5V*V/r...just getting up there isn't enough as gravity still exist. So that pesky reduced (but still existent gravity) is where a lot of the fuel is wasted. So that wonderful pipe dream of a space elevator is useless for maintaining orbit once you get there. And getting out of orbit is a whole nother' ball of wax.
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Most space elevator proposals I've seen involve extruding a cable from a suitable captured asteroid in geostationary orbit. The asteroid then provides the counterbalance as the cable is built and lowered.
 
What a stupid idea. As others have said, there needs to be more research on recycling material in landfills rather than the gigantic waste it would be to remove it from the planet.
 
TTDR (Too Tired didnt read - probably will tread read tomorrow)


IMO - Bad idea.

How many balls of garbage would end up wandering around the solar system posing all types of navigational hazard?

How much in the way of resources would be wasted? Even if we build a huge rail gun in a helio-centric earth orbit to fire compressed pellets in the right direction.

With the possible exception of materials that are strongly radio active with long 1/2 lives it is a stupid waste of resources.

Another idea that comes along every few years (for at least 30 years by my memory) is plasma separation. Also energy expensive (IMO a better use of the energy). It isnt garbage till you have made something out of it, used it, broke it, spoiled it, or whatevered it. Throw them in the sun and you likely won't even get the same elements back even if you wanted to wait for the matter to come back out.
 
Interestingly, it's super hard to actually shoot anything into the sun. It requires a lot more energy then simply putting something into a lower orbit. You have to slow the object down a lot for it to fall into the sun.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Why?
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The earth is moving very quickly relative to the sun. That's how it stays in orbit. In order to "fall into" the sun, you need to remove all that relative speed. If you don't add enough counter-velocity, you'll overshoot the sun and just keep orbiting. That's something around 30 km/s of velocity you need to counter. That's a lot. Like, a lot lot. That would require a lot of fuel.

To escape the solar system from the earth, you're already more than halfway there. Since the earth is moving so quickly already, simply adding a bit of extra velocity will increase your orbit. The faster you go, the higher your orbit. Turns out that, given earth's orbit and speed, you only need to add around 15 km/s to your rocket before it escapes the solar system entirely.

Think about those big plastic funnels you see at the mall you drop coins into, then watch them spin around as they fall into the center. They don't simply fall into the center - they roll around the outside, and are rolling so fast they are virtually horizontal at the middle. You need to exert a relatively large force on them at the end to get them to stop and fall straight to the middle, whereas a little bit of an extra nudge at the beginning would cause it to fall off the outside.
 
ShagnWagn said:
Should not shoot it to the sun. Eentually Earth will run out of resources in nature. Garbage dumps will be worth more than gold mines. If we are even allowed to stay around that long (the end times).
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+1. We should be focusing more on reusing and recycling than sending our resources into a permanent incinerator.
 
Futurama season 1, episode 8, A Big Piece of Garbage.

The garbage ball returns after hundreds of years in orbit in space.
 
Hmm.. ok, the point about getting it up into space is well taken.

Rocket is out of the question, a Rail Gun would still use a tremendous amount of energy but is getting closer, although a space elevator (ala The Fountains of Paradise) may be economically viable.

Once it's up there, I'm not a rocket scientist, but seems to me you just need to give it a little push. It's not like we need race the trash to the sun, it would just need to escape Earth's gravity, time the shoot so it doesn't hit other planets (or maybe who cares about that, really...) and then let the Sun's own gravity take over. Maybe that takes all that fuel and then some, but intuitively it just seems like it would need a lil' shove and that's it.

Apart from that whole energy part, which is big... why would we want to send trash off world? The nuclear waste, I can almost understand, but even that not really.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Why?
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Well you would need to entirely cancel out the earth's orbital velocity. So you would need about 30km/s worth of delta-v. That's a lot. Not even a complete and fully fueled Saturn V parked in orbit could do that.

When leaving the solar system you are already at a significant speed so a lot of the work is already done simply by starting from the earth's orbit. You also can use outer planets for gravity assists.
 
Seventyfive said:
We could pay for it, just tax the 1% and add it to Bernie's wish list. Then we can make memes with pictures of trash and say "feel the Bern". Then when people say it's not possible just accuse them of defending the ultra rich 1% and the shadowy alliance of global bankers.
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Sure am glad I finished my coffee before reading this! We should test this by packing up DC and making them feel the bern!
 
my question would be if the sun can take all of our garbage without problem... I suppose it could
 
forget the Sun, just find a way to stuff it under a continental plate is undergoing subduction, just put that garbage back in the Earth where it came from, surely the temperature inside the Earth can deal with breaking it down into its basic elements.
 
Brian_B said:
Hmm.. ok, the point about getting it up into space is well taken.

Rocket is out of the question, a Rail Gun would still use a tremendous amount of energy but is getting closer, although a space elevator (ala The Fountains of Paradise) may be economically viable.

Once it's up there, I'm not a rocket scientist, but seems to me you just need to give it a little push. It's not like we need race the trash to the sun, it would just need to escape Earth's gravity, time the shoot so it doesn't hit other planets (or maybe who cares about that, really...) and then let the Sun's own gravity take over. Maybe that takes all that fuel and then some, but intuitively it just seems like it would need a lil' shove and that's it.

Apart from that whole energy part, which is big... why would we want to send trash off world? The nuclear waste, I can almost understand, but even that not really.
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If you just gave it a little nudge, it would still be orbiting the sun at approximately the earth's orbit. Remember, the earth is in orbit because its speed (~30 km/s) is just enough to balance out the gravitational attraction of the sun. If you slow the earth down just a little bit, it won't fall into the sun.. it'll move to a different, more eccentric orbit. Same applies to anything else you put in space.

Imagine swinging a baseball at the end of a rope around your head. The baseball is moving very fast. If you just give it a little nudge, it won't fly straight at your head.
 
Pretty soon the mass of the Earth would be a lot smaller and we go hurtling into Pluto orbit. Could counteract the global warming though.
 
sfsuphysics said:
forget the Sun, just find a way to stuff it under a continental plate is undergoing subduction, just put that garbage back in the Earth where it came from, surely the temperature inside the Earth can deal with breaking it down into its basic elements.
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More likely scenario. We already get rid of liquidy waste via deep well injection.
 
kumquat said:
If you just gave it a little nudge, it would still be orbiting the sun at approximately the earth's orbit. Remember, the earth is in orbit because its speed (~30 km/s) is just enough to balance out the gravitational attraction of the sun. If you slow the earth down just a little bit, it won't fall into the sun.. it'll move to a different, more eccentric orbit. Same applies to anything else you put in space.

Imagine swinging a baseball at the end of a rope around your head. The baseball is moving very fast. If you just give it a little nudge, it won't fly straight at your head.
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Thanks, that makes more sense to my ape brain.
 
alxlwson said:
Nothing would actually make it to the sun. It would burn up thousands of miles before ever reaching it.
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You do realize that when something burns up it just gets turned into something else, I suppose solar wind could blow some of that dust away but metals, particularly heavy metals are going to stick around. I don't know what that's going to do to the sun but that stuff would still be useful to us. Mankind has the uncanny ability to invent uses for everything. Look at how efficient we are at processing animals, for example, we pretty much leave nothing left.
 
I don't care how safe anyone says it is, I think the Sun is the last thing in the galaxy we should be fucking with. Piss off the Sun and, well, you know. Things could get a little uncomfortable.

We're not always as smart as we think we are, and this is one area where chances should not be taken IMNO. Leave the Sun the fuck alone I say !
 
kumquat said:
The earth is moving very quickly relative to the sun. That's how it stays in orbit. In order to "fall into" the sun, you need to remove all that relative speed. If you don't add enough counter-velocity, you'll overshoot the sun and just keep orbiting. That's something around 30 km/s of velocity you need to counter. That's a lot. Like, a lot lot. That would require a lot of fuel.

To escape the solar system from the earth, you're already more than halfway there. Since the earth is moving so quickly already, simply adding a bit of extra velocity will increase your orbit. The faster you go, the higher your orbit. Turns out that, given earth's orbit and speed, you only need to add around 15 km/s to your rocket before it escapes the solar system entirely.

Think about those big plastic funnels you see at the mall you drop coins into, then watch them spin around as they fall into the center. They don't simply fall into the center - they roll around the outside, and are rolling so fast they are virtually horizontal at the middle. You need to exert a relatively large force on them at the end to get them to stop and fall straight to the middle, whereas a little bit of an extra nudge at the beginning would cause it to fall off the outside.
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Well obviously you make yourself a garbage powered rocket, simply burn the garbage to give necessary delta-V and bingo bango you win!
 
Zigmorph said:
From what I've read in the past, most of the cost associated with getting things into space is the trip out of the atmosphere. Make that trip cheaper and this might be a possibility. There's been talks of using bucky balls( carbon nanotubes) to make a "space bridge" if you will. Exciting times we live in!
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No, the vast majority of the fuel burned goes toward accelerating the rocket to escape velocity. Starting from low orbit with zero velocity might save 10~15% of the fuel/mass.
 
Why send it to the sun? Just send it up high enough that when it comes crashing back, it burns up in the atmosphere. Or volcanos. Drop stuff in volcanos
 
krotch said:
Why send it to the sun? Just send it up high enough that when it comes crashing back, it burns up in the atmosphere. Or volcanos. Drop stuff in volcanos
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Burned up radioactive ash along with other toxic crap is not what most care to breath.
 
Elf_Boy said:
Burned up radioactive ash along with other toxic crap is not what most care to breath.
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I was just talking about regular trash, not radioactive waste. I wouldn't even contemplate sending radioactive waste into the air or volcanos. Unless we have a 100% rocket launch success rate, I wouldn't chance the rocket exploding and raining radioactive waste down.
 
Scottw said:
What a stupid idea. As others have said, there needs to be more research on recycling material in landfills rather than the gigantic waste it would be to remove it from the planet.
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Unfortunately, recycling isn't always sensible. Some things, like metal are definitely cost sensible to recycle. Not only is it cost effective to do so, it's not any worse on the environment for doing so. Other things are either too costly to reprocess, or the process for doing so is worse for the environment than simply making more of the thing you are trying to recycle. Recycled paper is one such example. I'm not certain of the cost break down, but It's chemically processed and those chemicals are horrible for the environment. It's more sensible (and better for the environment) to plant fast growing trees, incinerating the refuse, and curtail the use of paper as much as possible.

As for shooting trash into the sun, I don't think it's cost effective to do so at present.
 
Sending trash up just for reentry is silly. We already have waste-to-energy power plants. If we're gonna burn it, may as well burn it for power.
 
It's because the Buy n Large corporation prefers to put people in space and will need to rake in more massive profits from their rollout of Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-class units. Geez, am I the only one that saw the documentary about this?
 
alxlwson said:
Nothing would actually make it to the sun. It would burn up thousands of miles before ever reaching it.
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Probably millions of miles before reaching the surface....the sun's corona is millions of degrees F hot. Being 36 million miles away from Sol is what makes Mercury reach 800F, and that is without a thick atmosphere to create a substantial greenhouse effect. Venus is even hotter, peaking at 870F because of a measurable greenhouse effect, despite being 67 million miles from the sun.

Besides that, if any of our iron waste made it to the sun's surface, it could set off a supernova.
 
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