On 3 Jul 2001, at 12:54, Darryl Shannon wrote:
> RE: Decaying Orbits.
>
> There is no such thing as a decaying orbit!
Yeah, yeah, technically. How about "an orbit with orbital
momentum under escape velocity"
> OK, here's what happens if you try to shoot a rocket into the sun.
<snip>
so it takes a decade to actually hit the sun..not like we need a
huge thrust then, is it?
> popular. Given the failure rate of our space probes, I can't see
> trusting a rocket stuffed full of radionuclides. The absolutely
> *most* dangerous possible thing one could do with these things is to
> vaporize them and have people breathe them in.
Launch failure and failuer is space are different matters...
Also, probes are REAL complex things..I'm talking about a simple
canister with a simpe rocket stuck on the back here...
> If the amount of waste is small enough that we could send it into the
> sun, it would still be much easier simply to crash it on the moon.
You REALLY want to radiate the moon? okaaaaaaay.
> But it would still be much much much much much much cheaper
simply to
> vitrify it in glass bricks and stack it in some old mineshaft or salt
> dome.
Until some idiot, 1000 years later dugs it up, yeah. *winces* Or
when the site gets smashed by an earethquake and groundwater
gets radiated. Not to mention the politics...
> I don't care how cheap space travel becomes. It could become as cheap
> and easy as a trip to Europe. And it still wouldn't make sense to
> dump nuclear waste into the sun.
Why not? It's a permant soloution which can't come back to haunt
us a few thousand years down the line...
Andy
Dawn Falcon
