On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 18:06, D. Jay Newman wrote:
> The earth is orbiting the sun at a given speed. The cost to deaccelerate
> something so that it falls into the sun is quite a bit more than just to
> throw it at the moon.

True, but doing it that way isn't the only way, it isn't even the best
way. Remember, ANY orbit that intersects the sun's surface will suffice,
it wouldn't take much computation to find a good combination of factors
to get the trash to do that. You don't just aim something at something,
give it a bunch of thrust, and have it hit target, that doesn't work
well on earth, that doesn't work well at all in space.

> > > The moon is a *much* easier target.
> >
> > Why?
>
> Because the moon is closer and you could throw the stuff fairly accurately.
> You don't have to bother to deaccelerate the waste. It could crash land
> just fine in a designated area.
>
> > > And we can get it again if we want it.
> >
> > I thought we were talking about stuff that we wanted rid
> > of - otherwise we'd use it!  Or store it for later
> > use...
>
> We can't use it *now* and it's too dangerous to leave around here.

Right, so sending it out into space is a solution??? That's what we've
BEEN doing in a way, sending junk to a land fill "far away". Space is
just another landfill that's far away to many people.

Oh, and what about that one load of nuclear waste that DOESN'T make it
to space, and instead rains down on us, yup, that's a good plan. Sorry,
but this whole "put junk in space" idea just seems silly to me. In fact
there's already enough junk left by us in Earth orbit today, and we
didn't MEAN for it to be junk left up there. TTYL

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