Moon is best for dumping the waste of earth

Originally Posted by The Mangler

I don't understand... Wouldn't the Sun's gravity take care of that? (Assuming that you put it on a rocket aimed at the sun [leaving Earth's orbit])
Why would you have to slow it (the junk) down?

Yes, if you'd provide constant push to the Sun, you'd get the junk to fall down your way. Otherwise the junk would assume ellyptical orbit as soon as you stop pushing and would become another huge dangerous asteroid swirling in the close proximity of Earth.

Sun's gravity would gladly take care of that, as you say, if there wasn't a little itsy bitsy problem. Earth is notstationary. Anything we launch from Earth has 30 kilometers per second of velocity from the beginning, and that velocity is not in the right direction. To put it simply - you ain't going anywhere just by pushing the junk away - it will remain in near-Earth orbit and that's it.

The only thing you can do is to launch the junk into the opposite direction from where Earth is traveling. In other words - slow it down. Considerably, by the way. 30 km/s is not that little.

I will write more as soon as I get more data and, preferably, some illustrations for you to understand.

[The Mangler]

Originally Posted by Carnifex

To put it simply - you ain't going anywhere just by pushing the junk away - it will remain in near-Earth orbit and that's it.

I'm not talking about just dumping it out of a shuttle or something. If you put it on a rocket, I don't see how it would stay in Earth orbit.

Are you saying that it is not possible for a rocket to leave the Earth's orbit?

As I already stated before:

Otherwise the junk would assume ellyptical orbit as soon as you stop pushing and would become another huge dangerous asteroid swirling in the close proximity of Earth.

I precisely meant pushing it with rocket. Just as soon, as you turn off it's engine, you will get an object swirling in an ellyptical orbit around the Sun because its huge initial velocity (which it gets from Earth) wouldn't let it fall down.

[Dragon Star]

Originally Posted by Carnifex

Yes, if you'd provide constant push to the Sun, you'd get the junk to fall down your way. Otherwise the junk would assume ellyptical orbit as soon as you stop pushing and would become another huge dangerous asteroid swirling in the close proximity of Earth.

Sun's gravity would gladly take care of that, as you say, if there wasn't a little itsy bitsy problem. Earth is notstationary. Anything we launch from Earth has 30 kilometers per second of velocity from the beginning, and that velocity is not in the right direction. To put it simply - you ain't going anywhere just by pushing the junk away - it will remain in near-Earth orbit and that's it.

The only thing you can do is to launch the junk into the opposite direction from where Earth is traveling. In other words - slow it down. Considerably, by the way. 30 km/s is not that little.

I will write more as soon as I get more data and, preferably, some illustrations for you to understand.

Ah, now it makes sense, thanks.

I'm glad you understood.

I figured out one example to prove that even pushing junk into sun's direction wouldn't help.

1. Gravity and rocket propulsion would be forces acting into the same direction, right?
2. If they are of same direction, we can analyze the gravity of some bigger body instead of the sum of the above mentioned forces. Figuratively speaking, let's just put some bigger star there to catch our junk, which gravitational force would be equal to Sun's plus the force from propulsion.
3. Gravitational pull is proportional to star's mass and reciprocal to distance between objects squared - so we go back to the Sun in the middle of the system, only put our object closer. All these operations we made are equivalent - you still get the same attracting force, acting upon the object.
4. As everyone (except creationists) possibly know, the closer you are to a massive body, the more speed you need to keep away from it. We have put our junk closer to the sun (or replaced the Sun with something bigger), thus it means the speed it had is not sufficient to maintain mostly circular orbit that Earth has.
5. However, it doesn't mean it will not orbit Sun. It will - in an ellyptical orbit. Even worse - no matter how long you will push it into the sun, you will never make it to fall into it. That is because it will start building the speed up from falling, and you will have to increase the push more and more to keep it falling
6. And yes, by replacing propulsion with bigger source of gravity, I made an approximation... in the wrong direction. Gravitational pull increases with distance decreasing - propulsion wouldn't. What follows is a simple conclusion - the orbit wouldn't be even that much ellyptical as with bigger sun.

With all that in mind we can deduce that pushing something into Sun directly is... well, not bright. Especially considering that all that junk would come back one day to Earth after making a full orbit. Not a pretty sight, huh?

The only way I see landing junk into Sun is pushing all that pile of junk not into Sun, but 90 degrees away, into the direction, opposite to which Earth is travelling. Then if we apply constant push into that direction, sooner or later we will slow that junk down considerably and then it will fall into Sun. Well, it's ellyptical orbit will get sharper and sharper until it will pass its atmoshpere, to be more exact.

I hope all this babbling was understandable

[sunofsky]

ya, now you have precisely given that idea here, carnifex. in some other kind the gravitational pool may also be result into tsunami like events on the earth by moon. but it will be mold into the planetary impact, and that is quite a less on earth.

sunil

[Khrushchev's Other Shoe]

Can someone do some back-of-the-envelope calculations which would demonstrate that the environmental problems caused by launching waste into space are not, let's say, 10,000 times worse than those caused by disposing of the waste on earth?

[Dragon Star]

Well, the surface area of Earth is 196,940,400 square miles, not that much room, but say we just ship it out of our solar-system, it could go anywhere in the universe, with no affect on us, what are the immediate problems with that exactly? I see none...

[Khrushchev's Other Shoe]

In order to ship waste into space, you need a rocket. The rocket must be built and operated, and it takes people to do that. It takes components to be manufactured, fuel to be produced, etc. In addition to the waste produced directly by the production and operation of the rocket, there is the waste produced by the daily living activities of the people employed in the shoot-waste-into-space program. So my question is, does a program to shoot waste into space on rockets eliminate even a tiny fraction of the waste produced by the program itself?

[Dragon Star]

Oh thats what you meant, sorry I was way off track...

In that case probably not, but it's wishful thinking.

I think it will be largely used with space elevators if they ever are made, but something certainly has to change with our habbits...