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Why the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010)

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Re: Why the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010)

#11
post #2

Its generally not worth it to give smart answers to dumb questions. I guess its a pet peeve of the author though.

Not true - sometimes a dumb question exposes confusion which when corrected reveals a smarter answer. Same reason testing works: if you're worried that your implementation (understanding) is wrong, put in malformed data (ask a dumb question) and see what you get out.

Re: Why the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010)

#12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true - if your goal is to change minds or address a standpoint, treating the position fairly and giving a smart, reasoned, and respectful response to a charitable interpretation of your opposition's standpoint is the BEST way to proceed forward.

Were this universally the case, creationism would have ceased to have adherents several generations ago. Therefore, I submit that your position is only true for rational positions reached and held by rational people who are willing to be convinced by rational discourse.

Most people don't have such ... strongly-held ... beliefs about rocket science as they do their origin.

Re: Why the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010)

#15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true - if your goal is to change minds or address a standpoint, treating the position fairly and giving a smart, reasoned, and respectful response to a charitable interpretation of your opposition's standpoint is the BEST way to proceed forward.

Were this universally the case, creationism would have ceased to have adherents several generations ago. Therefore, I submit that your position is only true for rational positions reached and held by rational people who are willing to be convinced by rational discourse.

"Why can't we launch waste into the sun?" doesn't really signal irrationality. If they prefaced it with "I believe the earth is 6000 years old and I wonder..." then maybe you'd have a point.

Re: Why the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010)

#16
post #3

Is there any way to use drag to decay the orbit? We don't have to reach the sun quickly . The solar wind is blowing past, is it possible to "sail" against that at an angle and - over time - dump orbital velocity and so end up in the sun?

For sub-millimeter particles, there is the Poynting-Robertson effect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynting–Robertson_effect

Re: Why the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010)

#18
post #2

Its generally not worth it to give smart answers to dumb questions. I guess its a pet peeve of the author though.

I would argue it's a waste not because it's stupid, but because it's just extraordinarily trite:

http://www.reddit.com/search?q=nuclear+waste+sun&restrict_sr...

...variations include "why can't we put garbage in the sun", "why can we put nuclear waste in volcanoes", etc. It's a great question coming from a 6-year-old, but if an adult asks it, he's simply not the kind of person who will spend one second in critical thought, or in researching anything himself. So, yeah, not worth it.

Re: Why the sun is a poor dumping ground for nuclear waste (2010)

#20
I've been curious about his last paragraph for a while - send trash out into nowhere - and unless I'm being an idiot, it looks like we'd still be paying (at the author's implied Saturn-V costs) ~48 million USD per short ton of waste.

Compare this to Yucca Mountain's current cost of $9b for ~77k short tons of storage (~$117k/sh tn) and it's still pretty awful.

We do get the ongoing benefit of no upkeep and happy NIMBYs for spacebound waste, but there are always the downsides of making a mess in our space-backyard (what will the aliens think when they come to visit? How embarrassing. Almost as bad, what if it comes back a la Futurama or gets in the way of future endeavors) and losing access to that waste if we figure out a means of making use of waste in the future.

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