Hitting the Sun is HARD

2016-07-19

[public] 2.64M views, 56.0K likes, 893 dislikes audio only

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This video is about the orbital mechanics of why it’s so hard to crash into the sun – the energy it takes to get there is astoundingly high, compared with leaving the solar system.

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Music by Nathaniel Schroeder, http://www.soundcloud.com/drschroeder

REFERENCES

International Atomic Energy Association report on nuclear waste storage:

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/LTS-RW_web.pdf

And Slate’s article on actual potential solutions to nuclear waste: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/2009/11/atomic_priesthoods_thorn_landscapes_and_munchian_pictograms.html

Info about sun dive delta v from low earth orbit

http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3612/calculating-solar-system-escape-and-and-sun-dive-delta-v-from-lower-earth-orbit

Oberth effect

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect

More on rocket burns

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20100033146.pdf

Sun dive probe

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100909-science-space-sun-new-nasa-solar-probe-plus-dive-bomb/

Other plans (jupiter assists) vs repeat Venus assist:

http://solarprobe.gsfc.nasa.gov/spp_mission.htm

Solar Probe Plus technical paper:

http://issfd.org/ISSFD_2014/ISSFD24_Paper_S6-2_Guo.pdf

Mercury Messenger Trajectory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MESSENGER#/media/File:MESSENGER_trajectory.svg

Online calculator for orbital velocities, escape velocities, etc:

http://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1360310353

Effective potential (possibly with interactive mathematica notebook?):

http://physics.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/doku.php?id=activities:main&file=cfeffpotential

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_potential

https://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Class/phy51/phy51/node8.html

Equations for elliptical orbit speeds, etc:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsis

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