Fukushima..

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Originally Posted by AnakChan

...Also Tateshina in Nagano is also good as long as you don’t encounter any mountain bears.

Respect

Just goes to show the peril in our seemingly harmless hobby is nowhere safe?!?

[Wavytone]

Originally Posted by AndyG

I wonder (if/when it's do-able), we fling our trash into the Sun?

Unlikely. While it seems a nice idea, from an engineers standpoint everything fails, sooner or later. When that happens the consequences of this stuff crashing back to earth are ... problematic, to put it mildly.

By way of example where a spacecraft carries a nuclear reactor for power (some do, particularly those that will venture far from the sun) the effort that goes into making sure it doesn't pose a safety hazard is phenomenal.

Doing that for launching waste... doesn't make any sense.

[kalon (Kevin)]

Originally Posted by AndyG

I wonder (if/when it's do-able), we fling our trash into the Sun?

That's not how orbital mechanics works... You need an incredible amount of speed to get to the sun - effectively orbits of planets and other objects are just sideways speed so fast that the gravity of the sun makes the object fall in a circle (approximately).

To 'fall in to the Sun' you'd have to effectively reach "escape velocity" - and for the mass of the Sun that's a gigantic 617km/s!

Recently, the Parker Solar Probe was launched on a large Delta IV Heavy rocket to try to get as close as feasible to the Sun and even at a puny 550kg, and using planets for gravity assists, it will only manage to get a velocity of ~190km/s and will be the fastest moving man-made object at that time - and it will still end up in an orbit, at it's closest of 6,900,000km from the Sun with elongated other side of the orbit (aphelion) of 109,000,000km!

Basically, cartoon physics have ruined our perception of just how mind-bogglingly huge space actually is - you can't "throw" an object in to the Sun, the same way as you can't "throw" an object from the International Space station back to earth, it requires thrust back to drop the orbit to the point where the atmosphere can provide aerodynamic drag to bleed the rest of the speed off so that the Earth's gravity 9.8m/s[^2^] can do the rest...

[multiweb (Marc)]

That's nuts! I had no idea the contamination was that widespread. I saw photos of northern Japan and the country side looks beautiful. The tags on the kids to check exposure is down right scary too.

When you mention mountain bears, is that like cute Panda type bears or Kung-Fu ravenous type?

[xelasnave]

I have stopped worrying about contamination because although in a worst case senerio millions of humans and animals may eventually die presumably from cancer we can probably safely say that some will not be effected and go on to reproduce and be the beneficiaries of the survival of the fittest rule.

If we are to travel in space we really need to toughen up and out grow susceptibility to radiation.

Alex