Current Events > When are we going to start launching our trash into the sun?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The sun can take anything we should be launching every single bit of waste we have

Well?

DuranOfForcena posted...

we produce far too much trash. launching payloads like that at the rate we'd need to in order to keep up is cost prohibitive.

I hope we can make it a thing in the near future when is more cost effective. Elon should be launching trash into the sun

Is this a serious question?

It's way, WAY, WAY too expensive to do with our current technology.

---

Ill post this because everyone seems to be missing the obvious and not just TC

reducing the mass of the earth is a very bad idea

if da world continues it wasteful ways then soon we will puttin sun into Trash

---

DuranOfForcena posted...

the amount we would be able to put up beyond orbit would take a reeeeeeeaaaaaaaally long time to have any meaningful effect on the overall mass of the earth

They said that about climate change too

Do you realize how resource heavy it would be to launch trash to the sun? Repeatedly?

---

yeah, I know what a mass driver is.

---

DuranOfForcena posted...

the world produces about 2.6 trillion pounds of trash each year. the earth's mass is 5.972 10^24 kg

so, both in kilograms, that's

1,179,340,162,000
vs.
5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

which means if we started blasting off the amount of trash the world produces every year (which would basically be impossible, but let's say we found out a way to do it) it would take approximately 5 million years to reduce the earth's mass by one hundredth of one percent.

Yeah. Its also blasting away resources that could be recycled eventually. Its also a bad idea to do bad things just because the side effects will come after were dead. There could also be side effects people dont consider and by the time they are noticed its too late.

Just gather it all into a big ball and launch it into deep space.

---

DuranOfForcena posted...

this is a weird hill to die on, but whatever

Im just saying people should think beyond the dollar signs

Arent recycling plus landfills the best option we have right now? Anything that cant be reused gets buried and the gasses given off are harvested and used for energy.

---

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Just gather it all into a big ball and launch it into deep space.

We can make a GIANT slingshot to hurl it into sun or space

Get on it Musk

---

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Just gather it all into a big ball and launch it into deep space.

But what if the ball comes back?

---

The production of trash far exceeds the amount of trash we'd be able to deliver into space.
If every American produced on average 1 pound of trash every day, that'd equal to about 350 million pounds of trash every day.
The Saturn V used for the Apollo space program weighs 6,221,000 pounds. Let's generously assume that a rocket of this type can send a tenth of its weight into space. That's circa 600,000 pounds.
Close to 600 of these big boys have to be launched into space to get over 350 million pounds of trash into sent into space every day.
With the insane amount of fuel these rockets require and consume, I'd worry about the depleting of our resources.


---

Aren't we at something like 1 in 50 launches ending up in horrible explosions? Would you risk a 2% trash being strewn all across the globe for a very marginal convenience? I'm guessing these sunshots would be happening at a much greater frequency than what we are doing today as well.

---

GFAQs mods started doing that today

---

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Just gather it all into a big ball and launch it into deep space.

Trash planet