We’re about to fly a spacecraft into the Sun for the first time
We’re about to fly a spacecraft into the Sun for the first time
arstechnica.com
We’re about to fly a spacecraft into the Sun for the first time
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They touch upon it in the article but there was a Lemmy comment a while back talking about how hard it really is to send anything to the sun. Because the earth is orbiting the sun anything we launch is also orbiting the sun and you have to add a whole ton of delta v to break out of the orbit.
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Yeah I learned this playing Kerbal! It actually requires more energy to send something into the Sun than out of the solar system entirely.
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Can you explain delta v for us slow kids in the class?
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Delta = change and v = velocity
So delta v is change in velocity
Also known as acceleration. It's just the "spacey* term for it.
Now in space there's generally nothing slowing you down except gravity... So to add delta v you simply run your engine or burn your rocket. But that uses fuel which is why it's hard to "add enough delta v to overcome our orbital velocity"... You need a whole lot of fuel compared to the mass you're trying to move.
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Relevant xkcd:
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I thought metaphasic shields were theoretical...