Ever had a really, really bad day? Maybe a thought crossed your mind: "What if I could just launch my enemies into the sun?" It sounds crazy, right? But believe it or not, a real-life astronomy professor has actually crunched the numbers. Prepare to be surprised – it's way harder than you think! But here's where it gets controversial... even if you could do it, should you?
Beyond the obvious ethical and moral quagmire (we're assuming you're not actually planning this!), Mother Nature herself is throwing up some serious roadblocks. Your first instinct might be: aim a rocket at that giant ball of fire and hit the launch button. Simple, right? The Sun contains a whopping 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system, so surely gravity would do the rest. And while gravity does play a role, it's far more complicated than just a point-and-shoot scenario.
Let's say you ignore all the physics and just fire a rocket straight at the Sun. What happens? Utter failure. You'd miss by a mile. The biggest hurdle, surprisingly, isn't building a rocket or even capturing your enemy, but overcoming Earth's own movement. NASA explains it perfectly: "Our planet is traveling very fast – about 67,000 miles per hour – almost entirely sideways relative to the Sun. The only way to get to the Sun is to cancel that sideways motion."
Think of it like this: you're trying to throw a dart at a target while riding a merry-go-round. You have to compensate for the spinning motion. Similarly, launching a rocket directly at the Sun without accounting for Earth's orbital velocity around it will result in a massive miss. As Michael J. I. Brown, Associate Professor in Astronomy at Monash University, points out: "When our rocket leaves the proximity of the Earth it is travelling faster around the Sun than towards the Sun. At first the rocket gets closer to the Sun. But the motion of the rocket around the Sun and gravity results in an elliptical orbit that misses the Sun entirely… we miss the sun by almost 100 million km!"
Ouch. That's a pretty wide margin. So, what kind of speed are we talking about to actually hit our solar bullseye? Brown estimates you'd need a launch velocity of 7,000 kilometers per second (4,350 miles per second). And this is the part most people miss: the fastest any human has ever traveled relative to the Sun is a measly 39,937.7 kilometers per hour (24816.1 miles per hour). That's a far cry from 7,000 kilometers per second. Unless we invent warp drive or some other revolutionary technology, reaching that speed is currently impossible. So, how do we solve this problem?
NASA's Parker Solar Probe offers a clue. This spacecraft has gotten closer to the Sun than any other human-made object, venturing within a mere 6.1 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) of its surface during its closest approach—a tiny 0.066 astronomical units (AU), where one AU is the Earth-Sun distance. And how did they achieve this feat? They didn't just point and shoot.
The key is to counteract Earth's orbital motion. Brown explains: "To do this, we would have a rocket leave low Earth orbit at 32km per second travelling in the opposite direction to Earth’s motion. If the Sun was overhead, the rocket would be travelling almost horizontally due east. Once the rocket leaves the proximity of Earth, its speed relative to the Sun would be almost zero. At this point the Sun’s gravity would pull the rocket (and the villain contained therein) inexorably inward."
Even with this method, the journey would take about 10 weeks. Plenty of time for your enemy to reflect on their life choices! However, even this approach requires speeds that exceed our current capabilities for a simple "blast and point" mission. In fact, launching your enemies out of the solar system entirely would require less fuel than sending them to a fiery grave in the Sun!
So, how do we get around this speed limit? The answer lies in "gravity assists," using the gravitational pull of planets to alter a spacecraft's trajectory and velocity. Think of it like a cosmic slingshot. A video from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory illustrates this beautifully: "Spacecraft can leverage the gravity of other planets to speed up, like a slingshot, or to slow down, like tapping the brakes."
The Parker Solar Probe, for example, uses Venus for gravity assists. By carefully planning its trajectory, the probe flies in front of Venus, effectively "borrowing" some of the planet's orbital momentum to slow down relative to the Sun. This allows it to gradually spiral closer and closer to our star. So, theoretically, you could use Venus to help fling your nemesis into the Sun, although it would be a long and complicated process.
As NASA stated before the Parker Solar Probe mission: "In addition to using a powerful rocket, the Delta IV Heavy, Parker Solar Probe will perform seven Venus gravity assists over its seven-year mission to shed sideways speed into Venus' well of orbital energy… These gravity assists will draw Parker Solar Probe's orbit closer to the Sun for a record approach of just 3.83 million miles from the Sun's visible surface on the final orbits." At least your enemy would get a scenic tour of Earth's "sister planet" before their ultimate demise.
So, what do you think? Is it worth the effort, the fuel, and the ethical compromises to launch someone into the Sun? Or are there better ways to deal with your enemies? Let us know in the comments below! And hey, maybe focusing on building bridges instead of launching rockets is a better path forward... just a thought!
