{"id":273882,"date":"2025-11-20T16:36:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T16:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273882\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T16:36:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T16:36:09","slug":"could-we-actually-launch-a-supervillain-into-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273882\/","title":{"rendered":"Could We Actually Launch a Supervillain Into the Sun?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This article is a lighthearted and educational exploration of orbital mechanics; no one is seriously proposing that we launch criminals\u2014or anyone\u2014into the Sun. Well, not that we\u2019re aware of.<\/p>\n

We live in changing times. While we once flippantly threw villains to the lions, now we seek to fire them into the Sun.<\/p>\n

It sounds easy enough. The Sun is unbelievably massive, with gravity sufficient to keep the planets in their orbits over billions of years. How hard can it be?<\/p>\n

Well, it may be harder than you think.<\/p>\n

Fire away <\/p>\n

The obvious way to fire someone into the Sun is the direct approach, as shown in South Park Season 1<\/a>. Point a rocket at the Sun and fire. But can that work?<\/p>\n

For a start, the rocket has to reach a speed greater than 11 kilometers per second [6.8 miles per second] so it doesn\u2019t get stuck orbiting Earth. Fine\u2014we can send off our rocket at 20 km [12.4 miles] per second for good measure. What happens next?<\/p>\n

The results are, to be honest, disappointing. It isn\u2019t even close: we miss the Sun by almost 100 million km [62 million miles].\u00a0But why? It\u2019s because we have launched from Earth, which is travelling around the Sun at 30 km [18.6 miles] per second.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>Firing our villain straight at the Sun results in a big miss.
Michael Brown, CC BY<\/a> <\/p>\n

Consequently, when our rocket leaves the proximity of the Earth, it is travelling faster around the Sun than towards the Sun. At first the rocket gets closer to the Sun. But the motion of the rocket around the Sun and gravity results in an elliptical orbit that misses the Sun entirely.<\/p>\n

To point a rocket directly at the Sun and hit it would require great speed\u2014enough to dwarf Earth\u2019s own speed, making it almost irrelevant to hitting the Sun.\u00a0How fast, exactly? If we fire a rocket at 7,000 km [4,350 miles] per second or more, then we finally hit the Sun. Bingo\u2014villain gone.\u00a0But achieving such an awesome speed is totally beyond our current technology. Is there another way?<\/p>\n

Going sideways <\/p>\n

Since our battle is really with the motion of Earth, let\u2019s tackle that head-on. Rather than trying to launch directly at the Sun, let\u2019s launch a rocket to counteract Earth\u2019s motion.<\/p>\n

To do this, we would have a rocket leave low Earth orbit at 32 km [19.8 miles] per second, travelling in the opposite direction to Earth\u2019s motion. If the Sun were overhead, the rocket would be travelling almost horizontally due east.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>Counteract the motion of the Earth and then it\u2019s a long fall into the Sun.
Michael Brown, CC BY<\/a> <\/p>\n

Once the rocket leaves the proximity of Earth, its speed relative to the Sun would be almost zero. At this point the Sun\u2019s gravity would pull the rocket (and the villain contained therein) inexorably inward.<\/p>\n

Given this is a journey of 150 million km [93.2 million miles], the trip would take roughly 10 weeks\u2014plenty of time for our villain to consider their sins before fiery destruction.<\/p>\n

Will any Sun do? <\/p>\n

While counteracting the motion of Earth and falling into the Sun is more practical than our first approach, there\u2019s a big problem.<\/p>\n

The fastest spacecraft ever to leave Earth was New Horizons<\/a>, launched in 2006. It reached a speed of 16.26 km [10.1 miles] per second after launch: well short of what we need to counteract the motion of Earth and fall into the Sun.<\/p>\n

In fact, New Horizons used Earth\u2019s motion and the kick provided by its rocket to fling itself towards Jupiter, Pluto, and out of the Solar System entirely. Because of Earth\u2019s orbital speed, it would actually take less fuel to launch a (suitably deserving) person out of our own Solar System towards another star rather than directly into our Sun.<\/p>\n

However, the distances to the nearest stars are more than 200,000 times the distance to the Sun. The travel times are thus measured in millennia, and hitting the target would be an unprecedented feat of celestial navigation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about the journey <\/p>\n

So is firing someone into the Sun out of reach? Yes and no.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that current rockets cannot achieve the speed for a direct trip into the Sun. But if we send a spacecraft into the solar system, we can use planetary flybys for a helpful push.<\/p>\n

Interplanetary spacecraft have used planetary flybys to gain and lose speed by swinging around planets. For example, the Parker Solar Probe has used flybys of Venus to lower its orbit very close to the surface of the Sun.<\/p>\n

The Parker Solar Probe used multiple Venus flybys to get closer to the Sun. <\/p>\n

We can use the same process to get our villain into the Sun. We can launch them into an orbit that takes them past the planets. With each planetary flyby their orbit is reshaped by gravity, taking our villain onto the next flyby and moving them closer and closer to the Sun.<\/p>\n

It will be a long journey\u2014years and over many millions of kilometers\u2014but finally our villain will meet their fate.\"The<\/p>\n

Michael J. I. Brown<\/a>, Associate Professor in Astronomy, Monash University<\/a>. This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: This article is a lighthearted and educational exploration of orbital mechanics; no one is seriously proposing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[112502,90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-273882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-orbital-mechanics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-space","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}