A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
If the idea is to be rid of the person completely, we don't need to fire them into the sun. Or launch them out of the solar system. They don't even need to reach earth escape velocity.
Just launch them at the sun. Use whatever method you like. Just get them high enough that after gravity starts to overpower acceleration, there is no chance for survival. Boom! No more person. For the most part.
Just launch lots of tiny bits of processed earth at them super fast. More propellant efficient and you don't have to worry that they might have packed a parachute.
You'd still be moving some 30km/s around the sun, and need to decelerate from that speed.
Does the velocity of the earth around the sun enter into it if the projectile doesn't come anywhere close to leaving earth's gravitational pull? When I said "at the sun" it was just a direction. A gesture towards the spirit of the original "into the sun." They won't reach it. They'll just be a splat mark [insert parabola math here]-ish meters away.
New slogan: Launch all billionaires straight up into the air using one of those circus cannons
how much to put them into a space suit and a car, strap them to a rocket and then fire them into orbit around Mars ?
Launch them into Betelgeuse instead. It's a bigger target anyway.
If we're going for a bigger target, let's go all out and aim for Stephenson 2-18. Go big or go home!
Vay Hek threatening to hurl the Lotus into deep space just doesn't have the same punch, though.
Can a solar sail be used to put a craft into the sun?
That's an interesting question. A regular sail can sail into the wind, but they have a triangular sail, and a keel with water resistance. I don't think any of those things exist in space, so I'm going to guess no. Perhaps some sort of high efficiency propellant keel could make it possible?
My intuition would say no, but to be honest, I don't understand the physics of either solar or watercraft sails.
Easily. You'd just have to use it to push your orbit in the right direction at the right time. If you are like Pluto, and way out there with a very eccentric orbit, unfurling the sail as you are heading into the galaxy might make your orbit path curve through the sun itself.
Exceptions do apply, things like near-immortal beings or cursed objects may require the destructive power of a Sun and no less
You could always put them in a co-orbit with earth or something and then just use solar sails to provide the delta-v
But I also like the idea of certain peeps having time to understand the error of their ways before slowly falling into the sun faster and faster.
And before some one says “well, there’s still plenty of time for that with a rocket…”
Naw. We’re talking about a truly idiotic person. It’s gonna take them a while,