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TheBroadHorizon t1_jdy0ve6 wrote

Reply to comment by Postnificent in Why don’t we use Venus as a dumpster? by Postnificent

You can't just "send something towards the sun". You need to cancel out Earth's orbital velocity which takes a massive amount of energy. It's easier to send something to Pluto than it is to send something to the sun.

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Postnificent OP t1_jdy14bc wrote

Which should be our first order of business with these new nuclear propulsion systems they want to use to explore mars. We just keep making more clutter. Eventually it will be a massive problem (like it isn’t already, it’s crazy up there)

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TheBroadHorizon t1_jdy1roe wrote

Still a ridiculous idea. It takes far less energy to just de-orbit debris and let it burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

You're basically saying that instead of throwing your trash into the bin by your house, you should put each piece on a plane and fly it to the Australian Outback to throw out.

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Postnificent OP t1_jdy2420 wrote

So the ISS will just burn up? That’s why it can just fall out of the sky over New York with no consequences? There is a lot of stuff up there you don’t want falling on the roof where your kids sleep.

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TheBroadHorizon t1_jdy2nry wrote

Large objects like the ISS are deorbited in a controlled fashion which ensures they burn up over the ocean away from populated areas.

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Postnificent OP t1_jdy3hi8 wrote

Not always. Things fall, things are destroyed, people are hurt. It happens.

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Scrapple_Joe t1_jdy5etz wrote

Rarely and still makes more sense than sending it to venus.

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Reddit-runner t1_jdzbpt6 wrote

>Which should be our first order of business with these new nuclear propulsion systems they want to use to explore mars.

The main problem here is that those nuclear engines are far less effective than the mass media wants you to believe.

The technology is extremely expensive and requires large volumes of hydrogen which is incredibly difficult to store in space because of the permanent sunlight. It will just evaporate.

In essence its far cheaper and faster to go to Mars via chemical engines.

To send stuff to the sun however requires far larger quantities of energy.

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Postnificent OP t1_je34xmj wrote

The point I am trying to make is that we need solutions. And the solution cannot be throw it in the ocean, we have already thrown more things in the Ocean than we ever should have. The average person has no idea that there are all kinds of harmful organisms all around us in the air we breathe, if we killed all those organisms the planet would die and it wouldn’t take very long. Yet we just go about our business, completely oblivious. We are killing this planet, the first step in saving it is stop killing it. The popular answer here is plunge it in the Ocean. That cannot be the right answer. The easiest way to do something is sometimes the worst way and causes more problems than it solves.

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