You don't need elaborate academic studies to realise that sending nuclear waste into the sun is impractical. Thinking about the escape velocities involved tells you all you need to know - if you aren't as
-- stupid as John Doe.
Solar cells and windmills both deliver electricity at a lower price per kilowatt hour than nuclear plants, and don't seem to create any radioactive waste.
John Doe lacks the wit to realise that this makes them better power sources. His enthusiasm for nuclear power does seem to be irrational.
The John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sdhn7c$pkp$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
And the John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sg3kr7$qt5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
And yet, the clueless John Doe troll has itself posted yet another incorectly formatted USENET posting on Wed, 25 Aug 2021 07:14:28 -0000 (UTC) in message-id <sg4qkk$6fk$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me.
The John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sdhn7c$pkp$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
And the John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sg3kr7$qt5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
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The John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sdhn7c$pkp$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
And the John Doe troll stated the following in message-id <sg3kr7$qt5$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
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They use the slingshot effect to move vehicles to much higher orbits with minimum fuel expenditure. I would think we could do the same thing to loop a vehicle around the moon and shoot it to the sun, no? That really should be the easy part.
Seems to me the flaw in the idea is the relatively high failure rate of launching space vehicles in general. Shooting them to the sun is fine, but not so good when they don't launch properly and explode or crash back to the earth.
I don't think the math works out. The moon's mass (and gravity) are too small, as it its orbital velocity around Earth.
One discussion I found:
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states that a Hohmann transfer towards the Moon approaches the moon at a relative velocity of 850 meters/second. In the tightest-possible path (just skimming above the lunar surface), the approaching object can manage a 106-degree course change, leaving the moon with the same relative velocity... which, when converted back into an Earth-coordinate system, gives a velocity relative to Earth of about
1500 meters/second.
So, even if you time everything for the best possible effect (with the vehicle now aimed "backwards" in Earth's orbit) you've only gotten rid of 1.5 km/sec of orbital velocity, out of the 29 km/sec you started with. You're about 5% of the way to a "drop into the sun" orbital-velocity target.
One crucial limit here is the moon's orbital velocity around the earth. It's only about 1 km/second. That means that when the moon is at the point in its orbit where it's moving "backwards" in the solar orbit (relative to the Earth) it's still got a solar-orbit velocity of about 28 km/second in the "forward" direction. A satellite that you slingshot around the moon is still going to have (28 - N) km/sec of solar-orbit velocity, where "N" is the satellite's approach-and- departure speed relative to the moon.
So, I think that (at best) you'd have to launch the satellite towards the moon at over 25 km/sec in order for the slingshot to leave it with a near-zero solar-orbit velocity which would let it drop into the sun. That's a huge amount of fuel to burn. And, at that speed, it's not going to manage to turn more than a few degrees as it flies by... so in order to have its final vector be aimed "backwards" in Earth's orbit you'd be slingshotting past the moon at just the wrong time to gain any real counter-solar-orbit velocity. As far as I can see it simply wouldn't gain enough delta-V to be worth the bother.
The NASA article I cited a few minutes ago points out that the solar-observatory satellite required a total of _seven_ gravitational slingshots in order to get itself into the desired orbit close to the sun.
Maybe a combination of solar sails and gravitational slingshotting? We could have a fleet of beautiful solar-sail butterflies, glittering blue with Cherenkov radiation, carrying our waste in 20-year orbits to the Sun.
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