# Why can't we just dispose waste out in space?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 1, 2010, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819 "2010-03-01T03:54:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/21 "2010-03-01T18:25:55Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> Getting rid of garbage is simply not a problem with respect to finding room for it on Earth. There is, in fact, a huge amount of space right here. You could dig a big hole on some Godforsaken Arctic island large enough to hold all the garbage produced by human beings for the next two thousand years and just dump it there.
>
> The problem with garbage disposal is:
>
> 1. Finding a place you can put it CHEAPLY,
> 2. That doesn’t cause an immediate NIMBY reaction.
>
> Functionally, dumping garbage in a big pit on Banks Island is a great idea; there’s more than enough room and not many people there to care. The problem is that no municipality could afford to do it.
>
> Financially, any city could just dump garbage into pits around town - there’s lots of room on most cities, really - but the presence of big dumps would infuriate the residents.
>
> Firing garbage into space is just an extreme example of being functional but not financially sound. It would WORK, it’d just cost you more for one load of garbage than the entire annual garbage disposal budget of a large city.
Hell, I bet you could even find a great place with lots of space in Nevada!
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### Author:  [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/22 "2010-03-01T18:43:24Z")
> [@legalsnugs](#):
>
> I know Absolute Zero about space-related anything, but if the cost of the launch could be worked out (nice huge cheap disposable space barges), could we blast the bad garbage into the sun? It would probably melt/explode/burn up long before it actually reached the sun, so what would be the down side?
If we had “nice huge cheap disposable[reliable] space barges”, we could just move all the mining, dirty-pollution-producing industry, et cetera off-planet and not worry about shipping waste out of a gravity well.
Once you have waste in orbit, it’s pretty simple to spiral it down into the Sun, either by using light pressure (solar sails) to retard its orbit, or solar-powered ion thrusters, or for that matter, just leave it in some kind of demarcated garbage orbit where it won’t bother anyone. You won’t have any significant effect from dumping waste (in any reasonable quantity) into the Sun, but there’s no particular advantage, either.
Stranger
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### Author:  [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/23 "2010-03-01T18:57:31Z")
> [@Icerigger](#):
>
> The Saturn 5 could if memory serves lanuch about 50 tons to Earth escape velocity, so how many would you need to keep say NYC free of waste? Lets give it a try.
At a cost of about [$2.4 to 3.5 billion per launch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Cost).
[This site](http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/KennyChen.shtml) says New York produces about 10[sup]7[/sup] kg of trash per day (order of magnitude). That’s about 20 million pounds. That’s 200 Saturn V launches _per day_. One every 7.2 minutes. At $3 billion a launch, that’s $600 billion per day.
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### Author:  [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/24 "2010-03-01T19:57:04Z")
For one person, assuming they generate trash at about the New York City average, that would cost $30 million per year to send their trash into space on a Saturn V (assuming it was being pooled with other people’s trash and we were sending up 50 tons at a time). If I start an orbital trash hauling company, would you be willing to pay the fees?
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### Author:  [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/25 "2010-03-01T20:14:28Z")
A mass driver might be more cost-effective-if big and efficient enough, it could launch things into the sun, where they’d be no tribble at all anymore. Naturally, if a set of coils failed it would have the same effect as a malfunctioning rocket.
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### Author:  [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/26 "2010-03-01T20:23:17Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#):
>
> A mass driver might be more cost-effective-if big and efficient enough, it could launch things into the sun, where they’d be no \*\*tribble \*\*at all anymore.
What if we bred them to where they would just eat the garbage? Then we wouldn’t even have to launch them away.
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/27 "2010-03-01T20:26:35Z")
The problem I see with a mass driver is that you need to reach well beyond escape velocity as the lump of trash will start slowing due to gravity and air resistance plus the problem of friction with the air would start it burning.
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### Author:  [@Nunavut\_Boy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nunavut_Boy)
#### Post date: [March 1, 2010, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/28 "2010-03-01T20:27:37Z")
> [@](#):
>
> […] You could dig a big hole on some Godforsaken Arctic island large enough to hold all the garbage produced by human beings for the next two thousand years and just dump it there.
Hey!
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/29 "2010-03-02T04:12:25Z")
> [@Contrapuntal](#):
>
> What if we bred them to where they would just eat the garbage? Then we wouldn’t even have to launch them away.
But the second they eat enough, they reproduce. So we’d be replacing a pollution problem with a tribble problem And we don’t have Scotty, transporters, or a Klingon engine room.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/30 "2010-03-02T05:12:32Z")
> [@Stranger on a Train](#):
>
> just leave it in some kind of demarcated garbage orbit where it won’t bother anyone.
But then our corner of the galaxy would look really junky and the neighbors would be mad at us for driving down property values and wouldn’t let their kids play with us. “E.T., have you been hanging out with those filthy Terrans again? I told you to stay away from them!”
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### Author:  [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/31 "2010-03-02T19:38:03Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#):
>
> You won’t have any significant effect from dumping waste (in any reasonable quantity) into the Sun, but there’s no particular advantage, either.
Or unreasonable quantity. I don’t think it would make much difference to the Sun if you dumped an Earth mass of garbage into it. We think the Sun is going to absorb Mercury and possibly Venus when the Sun evolves into a red giant, with the only significant effect being a slight increase in the Sun’s spin.
It might be a different story if we could somehow get the Earth-sized ball of garbage into the [core of the Sun (see entry 3), assuming it were made of some non-fusible material](http://qntm.org/destroy#sec5). But I don’t think anybody’s planning to do that.
It’s difficult to imagine how we could generate more than an Earth mass of garbage without seriously more technology than we have now.
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### Author:  [@TerpBE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TerpBE)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/32 "2010-03-02T20:00:08Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#):
>
> A mass driver might be more cost-effective-if big and efficient enough, it could launch things into the sun
Actually it takes about twice as much energy to send something to the sun as it takes to send it entirely out of the solar system.
The Earth orbits the Sun at ~30 km/sec. To escape the solar system takes a velocity of ~42km/sec. So to get to the Sun, you have to add “-30 km/sec” of velocity, while to escape the solar system, you only have to add 12 km/sec.
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### Author:  [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)
#### Post date: [March 2, 2010, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-we-just-dispose-waste-out-in-space/530819/33 "2010-03-02T20:18:18Z")
Current costs to dump garbage in the Puente Hills landfill in Los Angeles county, California: [$38.26 per ton.](http://www.lacsd.org/info/solid_waste/disposal_rates.asp#PHLF_rates) Compare that to $60 million per ton to launch it into space using a Saturn V. That should answer the question of why we don’t launch garbage into space. There are other reasons, but that’s the main one.
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