Yes. It's surprisingly hard to get something to hit the sun.
What you have to do is slow down. Remember we are orbiting it.
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2026
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You'd think a giant mass like that might have some helpful gravity, but we're all in a stable orbit with a strong angular momentum.
Throw them backwards really hard.
And if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
I need you to understand that when I want someone launched into the sun, it's not because it is easy, but because it is hard. I want to go to the extra effort and delta v necessary so that we can make it abundantly clear that you, evil horrible cretin, are worth the collective effort of thousands to personally be launched into the sun.
Can we compromise by strapping them to the launch pad directly underneath the rocket before it's ignited?
But then you miss out on all the time they would spend contemplating how they ended up in that situation, damn millenials trying to kill the record scratch industry.
you miss out on all the time they would spend contemplating how they ended up in that situation
You can leave them strapped to the pad as long as you want before igniting if you want to give them time to contemplate.
Plus, imagine how nervous they'll be once they start hearing the countdown...
I'd be happy to see them anywhere on the pad considering the sound pressure can kill at that proximity regardless
But ... fire.
True, but we've seen lots of things killed with fire. How many things have we really seen obliterated by sound pressure?
Ok, JFK, calm down.
If you accelerate to a very high orbit, you will have nearly zero velocity at the apoapsis. From there it takes only a very small delta v to reduce your velocity to zero and fall into the sun.
Source: This is how I killed Jebidiah Kerman.
This is the part I don't understand apparently. Wouldn't it be pretty easy for the thing so giant that it causes other giant things to circle it suck up a tiny person relatively easily?
If the tiny person wasn't going so fast that it's in orbit around the big thing, yeah - all you have to do to get the person to fall in is to stop them moving. The problem is that you have to push them reeeeeal hard to get them to stop moving in orbit around the sun. (That's what Delta-v means - change in velocity.)
Makes sense
This only worked because Jedediah did not die in the many years it took time wraping between your maneuvres.
For the sun instead of Krebol, Jupiter might most likely throw you of track within then 200-300 years. So you would have to spend more than on escape. Even though theoretically (and in KSP), you can spend exactly only escape dV
- Please don't pollute interstellar space with assholes. It's bad enough that we filled Earth with them.
- If I wanted to be efficient, I'd drop them in an active volcano. If I want someone thrown into the Sun, I WANT SOMEONE THROWN INTO THE SUN.
You can have your cake and eat it. Launch them into a different sun, we can create a congo line of frozen corpses, on their way to Alpha Centauri. Although it might weird any aliens out that might come across it.
Good pitch, I like it.
I suppose we could sent them to a Lagrange point and call it good?
I'd be satisfied with a sub-orbital parabola in the general direction of *gestures at sky*
Someone on the other end might need a mop but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Send them to the bottom of the ocean. Concrete shoes are a lot less expensive than a rocket. Probably more environmentally friendly, too.
Even more environmentally friendly, use a geopolymer cement that doesn't use a quicklime reaction that requires heat to produce.
Isn't it possible to use some swing-by maneuver around other planets to fly directly into the sun?
Yeah. Check out the path they launched the Parker Solar Probe on. That wasn't into the Sun, but it was as close as anything we've ever sent up.
No idea if this has any real world application, but Kerbal Space Program taught me that launching outwards to a huge planet (Jupiter), one can get a reverse gravity assist to get an extremely narrow ellptical orbit. Then you just need a light retrograde thrust at the apoapsis, and your orbit will intersect with the sun
I get that it's very difficult to send something directly into the Sun. Couldn't you just put them into a highly eccentric and unstable orbit that would crash into the sun after several passes?
If you want to prove a point: Trebuchet them into active volcanoes. It uses no propellant, very little effort, and gets the point across.
If you want to be efficient: Grind them up and use their corpse-meal as compost. Spread them in a field, grow hemp and/or soybeans.
What about launching them into Venus? It’s smaller, and closer. Would that save on gas?
~I think I got three-fitty in my center console.~
frankly, yeeting them 50m into the air is enough to give them a bad day.
I'm assume the reason why is because, in order to go into the sun, 100% of Earth's rotational velocity has to be counteracted, and it doesn't for the opposite direction?
But I want to picture them burning not freezing or running out of oxygen.
Yeah I’m not risking them coming back later with an alien army
Source for the claim?
Source? It's not exactly brain surgery...
It is, however, rocket science.
Looks like the source is a screenshot from a microblog. Hope that helps 🤗
It's surprisingly difficult to launch anything out of the solar system due to orbits and the Oort Cloud. Not saying the sun is easy, but in my opinion, it's definitely more realistic.
I prefer the idea of firing them off a cliff with a trebuchet instead. Same end result, far less expensive, and they're aware the entire time they're plummeting to their doom. Plus trebuchets are inherently funny.
So we can't just do the same thing that we do to get something out of the solar system, but "in reverse"? Like a reverse/inverted slingshot? Use the inner planets to brake?
Or how about this, do a slingshot maneuver, but only a single one, that launches it softly straight outwards from one of the planets, in line with the sun. Then just wait until it loses momentum and starts falling straight into the sun. Would that take too long, maybe?
Like if we just dropped something into existence at 1 AU from the sun without any orbital momentum, how long would that object take to fall into the sun?
^ This guy efficients.
Zero propellant for operating a guillotine
Hear me out, though: rocket propelled guillotine
But consider how cool a guillotine with a rocket would be
An air compressor and some cheesewire might be simpler and lighter...
Y tho? isn't escape velocity from earth the same no matter where your final destination? I don't care if they get there fast or slow as long as hey get there. I don't know enough math to get why it isn't just a matter of timing and angles.