• BluesF@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Still this approach seems wasteful. Just making it sufficiently far from the surface travelling in the right direction should be enough… As long as you aren’t in a rush.

      • Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        8 months ago

        Yeah it just depends on whether the goal is to launch the child into the sun or just in an orbit with a low periapsis

      • Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        8 months ago

        It requires energy to shrink an orbit just as it does to grow it. Since we’re launching from Earth, we start with Earth’s orbit around the sun, and we have to burn enough to bring the perihelion of our launched child’s solar orbit to within the sun itself. We could use Venus or Mercury for gravity assists but the angular speed of the orbit does have to be mostly cancelled to hit the sun