What have you learned today?
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
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It's Surprisingly Hard to Go to the Sun - NASA
The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass in our solar system. Its gravitational pull is what keeps everything here, from tiny Mercury to the gas giants to
www.nasa.gov
Well, I read that. And I'm not in the habit of doubting the people who do mathematics for NASA.It's Surprisingly Hard to Go to the Sun - NASA
The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass in our solar system. Its gravitational pull is what keeps everything here, from tiny Mercury to the gas giants to
While I don't want to argue with NASA about this, they are talking about reaching the sun (or close to it) by a set timeframe. Which, ok, but if you are just launching summat at the Sun and not caring how long it takes to get there, not sure how much of that would apply.
All I'm sayin' is, renting a woodchipper is way less expensive than either of those.
Why spend any money at all? You have a stomach for a reason. You'll end up saving money!
Upon doing further research (ie, asking my father, who is a physicist), the reason it's easier to go out of the system than into the sun is because the orbital velocity of the Earth is more than half the escape velocity of the Sun. So we are more than halfway out to begin with.
He also stressed that it is thus easier to fling the Earth into interstellar space than drop it into the Sun, though I emphasised I had no immediate plans to do either.
