TIL that it takes less energy to launch something out of the solar system than directly into the sun. Apparently its because the massive gravity of the Sun causes objects to orbit instead of pulling objects into itself. Why?
In: Physics
The sun and every planet Star and particle in our universe are in fact moving.
When we launch something it has to escape our gravity, as a planet. But then we set it down in a specific spot. Then using gravity itself, computers, telemetry data, and small thrusters, we keep it in place.
When we send something to a distant place like Mars, we actually have to calculate where Mars is going to be when our item gets there. Like placing a rifle shot before a moving target.
(When we launched the Hubble space telescope, we basically dropped it off our planet using a rocket and told it to keep moving, using small thrusts, but the natural motion did more for us than those thrusts.)
The Sun’s gravity doesn’t work like a drain.
The Sun doesn’t bring things to itself, we orbit it on an elliptical path, relative to where it is on it’s own path on our arm of the Galaxy. We would need constant forward thrust to get an item to it, more energy necessary.
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