In a provocative essay, to say the least, an Australian astronomer explores the theoretical possibility of sending people considered dangerous directly to the Sun.
The proposal jokingly presented by Michael J. I. BrownProfessor of Astronomy at Monash University, explains how there are surprisingly more physical than legal challenges to this imaginary project.
Launching a rocket towards the Sun may seem simple: it would be enough to place it towards the star, but that’s not quite the case. It would be necessary to reach a minimum escape velocity from Earth’s gravity, approximately 11 km/s.
Assuming that this were possible, pointing the spacecraft directly at the Sun would not guarantee the impact, explains Brown in . On the contrary, due to the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun at approximately 30 km/s, the rocket’s trajectory would be divertedresulting in an elliptical orbit that would miss the target by almost 100 million kilometers.
The main problem is that, when leaving Earth, the ship maintains the planet’s orbital speed. In other words, it initially approaches the Sun, but the combination between orbital movement and solar gravity ends up pushing it onto a route that avoids the star completely.
To counter this effect, it would be necessary to launch the rocket in the opposite direction to Earth’s orbit and at a substantially higher speed, around 32 km/s. Only then would the ship be practically “stationary” in relation to the Sun, allowing gravity to pull it directly into the interior of the star.
Furthermore, the trip it would take about ten weeksduring which the passenger in question could, as Brown quips, “reflect on his sins” before facing final destruction.
Current technology is far from reaching such speeds. The probe, launched by NASA in 2006 and considered the fastest to leave Earth, only reached 16.26 km/sequivalent to approximately half the speed required for this hypothetical mission.
So, what could be done to make this macabre mission possible? Brown does not suggest calling Tom Cruise, but rather resorting to gravity assist maneuverssimilar to those used by New Horizons itself, which gained additional speed when going around Jupiter. By taking advantage of the gravitational field of several planets, it would theoretically be possible to progressively accelerate the ship and shape its orbit in such a way as to direct it towards the interior of the Solar System and, finally, towards the Sun.
