# Would There Be Any Ill Effects to Launching Things Into The Sun? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 19, 2009, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654 "2009-04-19T21:13:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/41 "2009-04-20T20:26:24Z")
The radio signals would only be practically detectable within a few light years. A weird spectral analysis of our star’s light could be seen at long distances. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/42 "2009-04-20T20:32:55Z")
Why is anyone even continuing in this vein? If you want to get rid of nuclear waste safely and inexpensively, I can give you three options right here on earth: 1. Re-enrich it and send it through again. Repeat until it’s essentially useless for energy generation and hence non-radioactive. 2. Mix with waste rock debris and stuff it back into the mine it came from. It will be no more dangerous than when originally mined. 3. Deep well injection. I mean, it’s basically a heavy metal, and that’s all. Plutonium is worse than uranium, but there’s not really any reason to build new plutonium reactors anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/43 "2009-04-20T21:27:57Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > The radio signals would only be practically detectable within a few light years. Not even. Probably not even much past **a** light year, at least not without gigantic planet-sized antennas. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/44 "2009-04-20T21:29:52Z")
Well, a sufficiently advanced society could have a solar system wide interferometric antenna system which might be able to piece together the signal from a few light years. But in any case it’s going to be easier to spectrograph a star than detect radio signals from an orbitting planet. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/45 "2009-04-20T21:47:00Z")
What about chucking junk at Jupiter, Saturn or one of the other gas giants? We don’t seem to have too much trouble sending probes to get lost there. Would there be any effects or possible reactions there? ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/46 "2009-04-20T21:50:22Z")
It’s mostly a matter of cost. The probes we send are designed to be as light as possible. To send hundreds? thousands? of tons of waste out there would require enourmous amounts of energy. Plus there’s the risk that if something bad happens during takeoff, you could potentially scatter lots of nasty stuff into the atmosphere. There are cheaper, safer ways to store it on the ground. The problem is really political battles/NIMBYism. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/47 "2009-04-20T22:16:18Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I can’t be the only one thinking of Nuclear Man from Superman IV. Wanna bet? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/48 "2009-04-20T22:16:57Z")
Even if it were free to lift the stuff into Earth orbit, it would be insane. You’d be shipping tons of material into space. What’s the mean time between failures for the space elevator? Even if lift costs per ton were very cheap for the space elevator, you’ve still got to pay back the fixed costs for building the thing. I know if I had a space elevator I’d want to use it for more important things than throwing away tons of garbage. What’s wrong with drilling a deep hole in a geologically stable area and stuffing the waste into the hole and then pouring cement over the top? At least then you can dig it back up if you want it again. Even if we absolutely positively had to get the stuff off Earth for some unknown reason, what would be the purpose of sending it into the Sun, or Jupiter? Why not send it into interstellar space? As has been pointed out earlier, takes a lot less energy to exceed the escape velocity of the Sun than it does to hit the Sun. And if you’re sending stuff out, why bother making it hit Jupiter? Seems like a lot of work for no reward. ---
**Author:** ![Ponderoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponderoid/32/19221_2.png) [@Ponderoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponderoid)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/49 "2009-04-20T22:22:59Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > so once you’re out of the bulk of the Sun’s gravity well, you just aim in the direction of your target star and give yourself a nudge. It’s gonna take one hell of a “nudge” to hit this particular moving target, no matter how much time you allow your probe to spend in transit: > [@Ponderoid](#): > > around AD 176,000. But at that time, it will also be moving away from us at around 41 km/s, and be about 15.5 light years away. > > Currently, α Cen is actually getting closer to us, with a close approach at 2.9 LY somewhere around the year AD 30,000, long before its proper motion puts it anywhere near the ecliptic. It will take approximately 21,000 years to go that far moving at [42 km/s]. \*\*\* Ponder ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/50 "2009-04-20T22:40:14Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Well, a sufficiently advanced society could have a solar system wide interferometric antenna system which might be able to piece together the signal from a few light years. But in any case it’s going to be easier to spectrograph a star than detect radio signals from an orbitting planet. Absolutely. Heck, we can do the former by extending the technology we have _now_. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/51 "2009-04-20T23:06:58Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#): > > Everyone’s jumping on my analogy; I don’t think they understood what I meant. I was referring to nuclear waste being dumped into the sun as spitting into a lake, not dumping the whole Earth into the sun. That’s the problem with asking an interesting question; it tends to spawn even more interesting questions that everyone really wants to discuss. To answer your question, no, if we could throw nuclear waste into the Sun there would be no appreciable repercussions. But, as **Chronos** and others have pointed out, this would actually require much more energy than flinging it into interplanetary or even interstellar space. Furthermore, if you have the technology to build geostationary space elevators you are probably beyond needed to use once-through fuel cycles; you can reprocess the waste into more fuel, use an effective breeder reactor, a subcritical fission-fusion breeder, or heck, just have giant solar collectors beam energy via microwave or x-ray to receivers on the elevator and pump it down to terra firma without having to waste all the real estate to mount panels on Earth. > [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > What about chucking junk at Jupiter, Saturn or one of the other gas giants? We don’t seem to have too much trouble sending probes to get lost there. I’ve forwarded this comment to my friends at JPL, as I’m sure they’ll get a laugh out of it after they’re done inveighing on how nobody knows their troubles. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/52 "2009-04-21T02:53:21Z")
> [@](#): > > But in any case it’s going to be easier to spectrograph a star than detect radio signals from an orbitting planet. I don’t know about that… Even if we dumped the entire contents of Yucca Mountain into the Sun, I doubt it would make enough difference in the spectrum to be detected at interstellar distances (at least, not any easier than detecting radio transmissions). ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654/53 "2009-04-21T03:16:12Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I don’t know about that… Even if we dumped the entire contents of \*\*Yucca Mountain \*\*into the Sun, I doubt it would make enough difference in the spectrum to be detected at interstellar distances (at least, not any easier than detecting radio transmissions). I dont know about that. The fifth force, NIMBYism, propagates easily across intergalactic distances 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-there-be-any-ill-effects-to-launching-things-into-the-sun/493654.md?page=2)