I remember asking once, we don’t we just shoot our surplus trash off into the sun and was told that by the cost of launching it outweighs the benefits. Fair!
But what about all of the old satellites and space stations? Why don’t we just send a giant magnet around the earth once or twice and then slingshot all that space junk into the sun and thus giving all science fiction writers (when they return from their strike) a plot point they can no longer use in their film scripts?
Seriously though, without the cost of breaching the atmosphere, this seems really cheap to pull, why don’t we do this? Why isn’t this a standard thing?
We should recycle and decompose everything on Earth and anything that can’t be recycled or decomposed, shouldn’t be made, that goes without saying… But this is about the space debris, the satellites, the nuts and bolts, the broken parts of space stations, the old space stations and I’m not suggesting we fly them, hence talking about sling shots, I’m talking about pushing them and letting the applied force carry it all to the sun.
The energy required to shoot something into the sun from our orbit is immense, it does not matter how you apply that energy.
Well since it’s so easy then just go do it! I take it you’ve never taken a physics class before
Please consider me stupid on this whole subject. I’m here to learn