April 2025
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macdjord <macdjord@gmail.com> on 2019-12-06 22:20:10 wrote:
Wait, a garbage dump planet? Why? Why in the world would people transport waste /to/ an even semi-habitable world rather than just dumping it in the sun, or on a solar escape trajectory, or something like that?
Alistair Young <us@arkane-systems.net> on 2019-12-07 13:41:43 wrote:
Actually, it’s cheaper than dumping it in the sun. Seriously. Take a look at this delta-v chart of the solar-system:
Delta-V Map of the Solar System - Imgur
It’d take 639.29 km/s of delta-v to get your garbage barge into the sun, but only 8.6 km/s to get it to Neptune intercept, which is a reasonable proxy for getting it to the edge-system stargate. You can do that all four times required for the round trip and still have 605 km/s in the bank, plus you get to keep the barge afterwards..
This is going with Hohmann transfers, but it’s not like brachys improve the relevant figures. And seriously, who ships garbage brachy anyway?
(Solar escape trajectories could be cheaper, but have the problem that they create litter, and no-one wants to be asked by the neighbors if that is your teratogenic, radioactive, mutated gray-goo cluttering up their sky. And they aren’t very pleased to see you.
It’s also harder if at some point in the future you decide you want it back.)
1 reply
April 2025
Alistair Young <us@arkane-systems.net> on 2019-12-07 13:41:43 wrote:
It’d take 639.29 km/s of delta-v to get your garbage barge into the sun, but only 8.6 km/s to get it to Neptune intercept
I’ve always wondered why no one answers those posts with "OK, so dump it into Neptune instead.”
1 reply
April 2025
▶ JAPH
To be fair, there are people who would do that.
But they’re the spacefaring versions of the people who show up in Xitter threads as an illustration of how Third World mentalities end up with you living in a huge pile of your own shit.
Give a hoot. Don’t pollute.
