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(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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It's definitely harder to decay the orbit into the sun directly than it is to get to escape velocity. But to play devil's advocate, there is probably a way to get them into the sun while being a similar cost to escape velocity. All you need to do is burn prograde to a super high aphelion, ride all the way out there to Pluto or whatever and then do a small retrograde burn to bring your perihelion inside the sun's photosphere. When you then get back towards the sun years later you would slam into it with a sick velocity that I think would be worth the decades-long wait.
This definitely reads like one of my KSP exploits...
Jebadiah is always so happy to spend 52 years only to find himself stranded on Bop.
I actually sent a rescue mission to save one of my kerbals and the science they had on board, and ended up needing to launch a mission to save the rescue mission....
Had to break it up into three launches, two to build the larger ship in orbit and one to fuel it up.
I learned a lot about orbital mechanics that day...
Total time in space was probably about 20 years...
And I may have forgotten about a kerbals in one or two plays....
I love KSP