Yes. It's surprisingly hard to get something to hit the sun.

What you have to do is slow down. Remember we are orbiting it.

I suppose we could sent them to a Lagrange point and call it good?

You'd think a giant mass like that might have some helpful gravity, but we're all in a stable orbit with a strong angular momentum.

I'd be satisfied with a sub-orbital parabola in the general direction of *gestures at sky*

Someone on the other end might need a mop but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Can someone explain why it's easier to yeet something out of the solar system, than to yeet something into a massive gravity well?

My dumbass thanks you in advance

Throw them backwards really hard.

Operative word is “into” the sun. Hitting the sun specifically = harder vs the general “away” direction.

Source for the claim?

The earth is moving rapidly around the sun, so anything we launch is already orbiting the sun. To hit the sun you then have to counteract all that momentum. To escape the solar system you just have to add a bit more speed to what we already have. Though both take a lot of energy.

Right now you are flying, together with earth more or less the speed you need to stay orbiting the sun forever.

Add a "little" speed and you fly away

Source? It's not exactly brain surgery...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics

Orbital speeds. Remember earth and by consequence everything on it is moving at 30km/s. Most efficient way to hit the sun is to cancel that out, or decelerating until your velocity relative to the sun is 0 and then gravity does the rest of the work. Orbiting a stellar object is missing with flair. It’s easier to entirely miss the sun by accelerating at roughly 12 Km/s additional velocity which will allow you to escape the sun’s gravity. Or 40% of the delta V (more velocity is not linear fuel expended either, more exponential with needing roughly 99x more fuel to do one than the other… not even accounting for the chase of now accelerating that fuel weight.)

A soccer player needs to either score a goal, which would be hitting the sun. Or they need to knock it out of bounds, which would be sending out of the solar system.

Both require power to drive the vehicle, but only one needs accuracy.

Looks like the source is a screenshot from a microblog. Hope that helps 🤗

https://imgur.com/delta-v-map-of-solar-system-SqdzxzF

It is, however, rocket science.

But I want to picture them burning not freezing or running out of oxygen.

more like, you need to hit a goal at the bottom of a funnel-shaped pit, but you're in a car driving in circles on the walls of the funnel at 100mph, and anything going 150 mph shoots out of the top of the funnel. aim isn't the problem, the shape of the funnel will take care of that. the issue is to get to the bottom you have to kick the ball backward hard enough to cancel out the speed of the car, i.e. 100mph, whereas to launch out of the pit, you only have to kick the ball forward at 50mph. if you kick backwards at 50mph, the ball will just keep circling the pit at 50mph; it might eventually reach the bottom but it will take a long time

What about launching them into Venus? It’s smaller, and closer. Would that save on gas?

~I think I got three-fitty in my center console.~

Well, technically, the more efficient way to hit the sun would be some gravity assists into the outer solar system and then slowing down to zero at a higher point, where your orbital velocity will be lower.

I need you to understand that when I want someone launched into the sun, it's not because it is easy, but because it is hard. I want to go to the extra effort and delta v necessary so that we can make it abundantly clear that you, evil horrible cretin, are worth the collective effort of thousands to personally be launched into the sun.

Zero propellant for operating a guillotine

Hear me out, though: rocket propelled guillotine

But consider how cool a guillotine with a rocket would be

It's surprisingly difficult to launch anything out of the solar system due to orbits and the Oort Cloud. Not saying the sun is easy, but in my opinion, it's definitely more realistic.

Just download Kerbal Space Program and it'll all become clear. It's a blast and accidentally teaching you orbital mechanics.

An air compressor and some cheesewire might be simpler and lighter...

Well, technically

The best kind of correct!

And if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Isn't it possible to use some swing-by maneuver around other planets to fly directly into the sun?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist

I prefer the idea of firing them off a cliff with a trebuchet instead. Same end result, far less expensive, and they're aware the entire time they're plummeting to their doom. Plus trebuchets are inherently funny.

So we can't just do the same thing that we do to get something out of the solar system, but "in reverse"? Like a reverse/inverted slingshot? Use the inner planets to brake?

Or how about this, do a slingshot maneuver, but only a single one, that launches it softly straight outwards from one of the planets, in line with the sun. Then just wait until it loses momentum and starts falling straight into the sun. Would that take too long, maybe?

Like if we just dropped something into existence at 1 AU from the sun without any orbital momentum, how long would that object take to fall into the sun?

We’re technically falling towards the Sun.

We don’t hit it, because we’re also moving around it at a crazy speed.

So even though we’re falling, we permanently miss it. If that makes sense.

The change in speed (deceleration) it would take to slow us down enough that we fall directly towards and into the Sun… is greater than the change in speed required to go fast enough to fly away from it.

So, you need energy to either change your velocity by 30km/s, or by 12km/s.

Hence, easier to speed up a ‘little bit’ more.

I'm assume the reason why is because, in order to go into the sun, 100% of Earth's rotational velocity has to be counteracted, and it doesn't for the opposite direction?

Yeah. Check out the path they launched the Parker Solar Probe on. That wasn't into the Sun, but it was as close as anything we've ever sent up.

If you accelerate to a very high orbit, you will have nearly zero velocity at the apoapsis. From there it takes only a very small delta v to reduce your velocity to zero and fall into the sun.

Source: This is how I killed Jebidiah Kerman.

I get that it's very difficult to send something directly into the Sun. Couldn't you just put them into a highly eccentric and unstable orbit that would crash into the sun after several passes?

frankly, yeeting them 50m into the air is enough to give them a bad day.

Ok, JFK, calm down.

Send them to the bottom of the ocean. Concrete shoes are a lot less expensive than a rocket. Probably more environmentally friendly, too.

Make sure to buy the original in that case.

Do NOT buy Ksp2. That game is a very unfinished early access game which has been conpletely abandoned, and it's shameful that it's still listed in the Steam store.

No idea if this has any real world application, but Kerbal Space Program taught me that launching outwards to a huge planet (Jupiter), one can get a reverse gravity assist to get an extremely narrow ellptical orbit. Then you just need a light retrograde thrust at the apoapsis, and your orbit will intersect with the sun

Even more environmentally friendly, use a geopolymer cement that doesn't use a quicklime reaction that requires heat to produce.

1. Please don't pollute interstellar space with assholes. It's bad enough that we filled Earth with them.
2. If I wanted to be efficient, I'd drop them in an active volcano. If I want someone thrown into the Sun, I WANT SOMEONE THROWN INTO THE SUN.

You can have your cake and eat it. Launch them into a different sun, we can create a congo line of frozen corpses, on their way to Alpha Centauri. Although it might weird any aliens out that might come across it.

Yeah I’m not risking them coming back later with an alien army

If you want to prove a point: Trebuchet them into active volcanoes. It uses no propellant, very little effort, and gets the point across.

If you want to be efficient: Grind them up and use their corpse-meal as compost. Spread them in a field, grow hemp and/or soybeans.

^ This guy efficients.

This is the part I don't understand apparently. Wouldn't it be pretty easy for the thing so giant that it causes other giant things to circle it suck up a tiny person relatively easily?

Good pitch, I like it.