why cant we throw our wastes and garbage's in space?can we aim it at the sun and let the sun burn it?

Question

i know thats a stupid question, but i just wondered....

Answer 1

Other than cost, it just isn't technically possible. Rockets don't fly through space. They propel the object into space and burn up in the atmosphere or stay in orbit around the Earth. It would take a ton of energy to propel that much that far. The satellites we launch into space are seldom larger than a Volkswagen Beetle, and yet it takes an enormous 120 ft rocket to get it there. And you must consider the failure rate of rockets: Lots of rockets blow up on the pad or during launch. If we were sending something dangerous up, the crap would come down and pollute us even
worse. Columbia ended up spread over 5 states. Imagine if that was nuclear waste, or even biological waste. Imagine if it landed in water.

It's not that stupid a question: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/66c90b4511b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

Answer 2

Not a stupid question!

It's an excellent idea, but it would have to be much less expensive than it is now to get it up out of the Earth's gravity well. Perhaps the Space Elevator could do it.

Probably will always be much cheaper to come up with some kind of plasma torch that can break down and separate the waste into it's constituent elements, and can thus be separated out and re-used/recycled.

Answer 3

As for the sun burning our garbage, that's out of the question... As of now, we have no means of getting to the sun, or aiming something there. Besides, it would be impractical to burn our garbage to the sun, transporation or whatever device might cost a lot, and maybe it will burn along with the garbage...

As for leaving it in floating in space, I think the best arguments is that scientists maight be apprehensive to leave something foreign floating around space, especially in massive quantities.

Answer 4

That would have no effect on the sun, so seems like a good idea. But the pollution that results from making all the fuel and rockets to carry the stuff off the Earth is probably as much as the pollution from storing the stuff. Improved methods of storing, conserving, and using waste would be better.

Answer 5

I think it's a good idea if it wasn't so expensive. If we find better alternatives to rockets, like a space elevator, that is.

Oh and people who think that we shouldn't pollute space just have no concept of how big it is. By the time we filled out solar system with enough garbage to make a difference we would have reached the heat death of the universe lol.

Answer 6

We can, for about $10,000 a pound providing we accept about a 1 in 1000 chance that it'll blow up before getting to orbit, and don';t mind burning about 1000 pounds of fuel per pound launched.
By contrast - there's almost always some way to use up waste at a profit, if you look hard enough. After all, the earth's been successfully recycling everything including radioactives for a few billion years now. We ought to be able to make our tech do it better.

Answer 7

Not stupid, just impractical. It would certainly be a simple solution for lots of annoying wastes, such as spent nuclear fuel rods, etc.

However, the COST is prohibitive. At millions of dollars per launch, only nuclear wastes might be worth the cost, but, we wouldn't tolerate a launch failure that spews nuclear waste all over the ocean, would we?

If we ever build a space elevator, the cost equation might sufficiently change enough to make it worthwhile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

Answer 8

it's just way to expensive. Also such things as nuclear waste simply can't be launched because if there was ever an accident and the rocket exploded it would spread that waste across the planet. Heh that would be a bad day for everybody.

Answer 9

It's not worth it. It costs way to much to launch things into space. We could put a thousand year's worth of garbage (even projected for population growth) out in the middle of North Dakota - it would only take up about 10 square miles, and no one would ever notice.

Answer 10

I believe that the cost of sending the waste through the atmosphere would be too high. It would take tons of jet fuel, and the emissions from the massive amount of rocket launchers would probably be worse for the planet than the garbage is.