Sending Garbage To The Sun Would Kill Us

Ensign Harry Kim () · Lieutenant Joined: 30 Nov 2001 Posts: 154

I have been doing some work over the last week on the idea of sending our garbage to the sun, to have it burnt up, and I found that within 82 years, the earth would not be able to provide any more raw materials, but I was wondering if anyone would know the effects it would have on the sun itself? Would the extra energy create larger solar flares, or would it have the possibility of blocking out the suns rays from reaching earh? Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

T. Dean · **Sun Feb 01, 2004 12:39 am**

Personally, I don't think it's a good idea. Plus, what would we send the garbarge inside of and how exactly would we go about doing it?

EnsignParis · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 07 Sep 2001 Posts: 257

The problem of available resources...I can't help you with that.

But...I could make a pretty logical guess that if we were to send garbage to the sun, that it would do absolutely jack *beep*. The sun is I believe 99.9% of our solar system's mass, the planets by themselves are almost nothing, even if we took the entire earth and hurled it at the sun, it would most likely just engulf it and keep on burning without the slightest (well, maybe an incredibly small amount) bit of change.

If we're just throwing a few pounds of garbage at it, it's not going to do anything (not that I've tried or done any research on the topic, but this is my best guess).

PrankishSmart · **Sun Feb 01, 2004 6:22 am**

Hmm, yeah. It costs something like $10,000 a pound, half kilo to send stuff into space. It's not really viable. I can't imagine any damage to the sun if we could do it.

borgslayer · **Mon Feb 02, 2004 12:24 am**

Why the sun? just dump it in mercury since there is nothing on the planet but meteor craters.

Mulder · **Mon Feb 02, 2004 6:21 am**

I think that we shouldn't dump our waste in space at all

Captain Skyline · Vice Admiral Joined: 09 Aug 2001 Posts: 6646 Location: UK

well if ur sending garbage toward the sun wouldnt it eventually decintigrate before it even reached it?. (?)

T. Dean · **Mon Feb 02, 2004 1:00 pm**

^That is a very good question. I think it would burn up before reaching it, I mean, what are the sun's temperatures??

EnsignParis · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 07 Sep 2001 Posts: 257

Yes, it would burn up before hitting the sun. The surface of the photosphere (the surface of the sun) is only about 5000-6000 degrees celcius. However, the corona, which extends millions of miles out into space, can be exponentially hotter than the photosphere, ranging in millions of degrees at some points.

Kyle Reese · **Wed Feb 04, 2004 12:40 am**

We should really just recycle garbage, but you know I have thought about what it would be like to send that stuff to the sun. But um, wouldn't it be easier to just dump it into space? I mean there's an infinite amount of space out there... right? Or just send it to the moon and bury it there. Yep I'm weird.

Tsuki no Hikari · Ensign, Junior Grade Joined: 12 Feb 2002 Posts: 41

When you dump it into space, you do exactly what we have with the area around Earth. We'll be littering space with tons of objects that can become deadly projectiles if it hits something we send out. Sending trash into the sun would only become easy and cheap if we ever developed an geostationary tether that would lift the trash into orbit before sending it toward the sun.

PrankishSmart · **Wed Feb 04, 2004 9:00 pm**

T. Dean · **Fri Feb 06, 2004 9:13 am**

The Delta Flyer · **Fri Feb 06, 2004 12:02 pm**

I read that in so many billion years time, the Earth will go into the Sun anyway...a little fizzle I guess.

Still, I guess that's not gonna be our problem

webtaz99 · **Fri Feb 06, 2004 6:03 pm Waste**

Sending our "waste" into space or the Sun would be an incredible waste of materials and energy.

Because of "profitability", we don't use available and emerging technology to deal with waste. If mankind would apply technology to waste management (instead of focusing on "profits"), everything currently considered "waste" could be recycled (or converted into useful materials).

Just a few examples:

NASA has found a way to accelerate the half-life of radioactive waste hundreds or even thousands of times, in order to covert it to stable or less harmful isotopes.

Bacteria have been discovered which actually absorb and concentrate plutonium from their environment.

Someone has patented a process which recyles the four most common plastics into 99.7% pure "virgin" material in one process (the plastics do not have to be sorted from one another).

These and many more technologies are lying dormant; even though they could easily be break-even, they wouldn't generate the large profit margins investors expect.

Captain.Dan · Vice Admiral Joined: 21 Apr 2002 Posts: 5696

Tiberius · Lieutenant Joined: 03 Feb 2004 Posts: 140

IntrepedII · Captain Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 1476 Location: Belgium

^aah so that why we dont get burned when were in an 85�C sauna

Los · **Fri Feb 13, 2004 3:20 pm**

T. Dean · **Fri Feb 13, 2004 3:26 pm**

^That is very interesting. You see, there in lies the problem ... money. If our culture were like that of Star Fleet (operates without the use of money) we could advance alot faster and develop new ideas a lot quicker.

imzadi76 · **Sat Feb 14, 2004 1:04 am**

We need to build some starships so we can go and leave the garbage here.

EnsignParis · Lieutenant Commander Joined: 07 Sep 2001 Posts: 257

IntrepedII · Captain Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 1476 Location: Belgium

perhaps we can use our garbage to power our warp engines ...

T. Dean · **Sun Feb 15, 2004 11:52 am**

imzadi76 · **Mon Feb 16, 2004 2:16 am**

If we sent our garbage to the sun we would also be sending a large amount of Earth's water with it. Over time that could be disasterous. Garbage created here should be processed here.