Do You Think We Should Start Throwing Our Trash Into Outer Space?

Question

I mean... don't you think that would help protect the environment? And we we wouldn't be polluting space because the trash would probably burn up when it reaches some star or black hole somewhere. I think this would be a good solution to our pollution problems.

Answer 1

Why not pollute space, humans have done a great job here at home.

Answer 2

I'm sure at some point when rockets become cheaper and when a viable reusable space vehicle is built that uses alot less fuel and material, it could work. I would say that you get private companies to build a vehicle, and whoever can get such and such amount of trash to say the Moon and get back in a reasonable amount of time, then that company gets a contract to deliver trash to the moon. It doesn't have to be messy either, all you do is compact the trash into a cube or something and surrond it with a durable plastic, maybe suck all the air out to make it into flat disks. You pack that stuff into the space vehicle, transport it to the moon and stack it there.

Another idea, Start incinerating the trash when it is on the moon.The sun idea could work as well if you set up huge magnets along the way. You launch the trash into orbit on a small cheap rocket, and then send the cube of trash towards a magnet which pulls in the trash, then it is attracted to another magnet, and another magnet until finally it is sent directly into the sun. Or you could put trash on inexpensive, gas free solar wings that use the power of the sun's energy to fuel a small motor that propels the trash forward. What's cool about this is that as you get closer to the sun, the solar wing gets more and more powerful as it gets more energy from the sun until it burns up along with the trash.

Answer 3

Get real! More than a ton of trash and pollution is generated by building and launching the multimillion dollar rocket needed to place each ton of trash into space, and rockets can only be used once. Just the first stage that falls into the ocean on launch would probably weight a ton! Not to mention the cost of many millions of dollars for each launch compared to about $10 to dump it in a land fill.

Answer 4

I agree but I also think that we should make certain that the trash goes into either the sun or a black hole by specificaly setting the navigation co-ordinates of the rocket to one or the other of those destinations. Otherwise, the trash floating around loose in space would eventually endanger not only any spacecraft but also have the potential to fall back down to earth. Also, I would advise putting any toxic material into a black hole rather than the sun due to the possibility of toxic material messing up the sun.

Answer 5

Think twice before doing this. If you throw trash in the outer space, and if you do it for ton of trash, the big trash will attract the smaller trash due to gravity and from a giant ball and hit the earth like a meteoroid and it will stink like hell.
Just kidding! It is not practically possible. If you throw trash to the space it may be trash to your eyes but you are actually reducing matter from earth and making the earth smaller place to live. The trash may seem negligible now but no a long run it is a loss.

Answer 6

So your idea is that we burn all of the energy of a huge rocket full of fuel like the space shuttle to get a few hundred kilos of rubbish into space. Thousands of tons of pollution from the engines just to put a bucket of trash in orbit. Then when the orbit decays it burns in the atmosphere and poisons us. Or if we want to send it to the stars, we need even more rockets.

Bit of a non starter.

Answer 7

We have already polluted our outer space with hundreds of burnt out satellites, now if you could figure a way to recycle these like loading up a shuttle with this space junk on the way back then the space program could begin to pay for itself.

Answer 8

Ok. First of all, all our trash would simply revolve the Earth outside Earth's atmosphere because Earth is pulling on all those trash. This may sound fine but it would be a problem for outer space missions.

Answer 9

No I think we need to concentrate on recycling what we can. I mean how much paper do we throw out in just a day? That all can be recycled and made into new paper. We could cut down less trees which means less machines expelling waste into the air.

Answer 10

I don't think NASA would be too keen on throwing away the Billion Dollar Rockets used to transport our trash into outerspace along with the garbage we're too lazy to dispose of properly.