Not sure what you mean by the question, but it’s because we’re in orbit around the sun. We’re already going way too fast, so you’d have to slow down, and slow down a lot.
It’s actually a kinda’ fun challenge in Kerbal Space Program to hit the sun, and KSP’s solar system is much smaller than ours (meaning everything is much closer and easier to hit).
Nope, it’d me much easier from Mercury. A higher orbit has more energy. A space ship has to speed up to increase it’s orbit.
Think of it like the old expression about what an orbit even is: You’re still falling same as always, you’re just moving to the side fast enough to always miss. Earth is ‘missing’ the Sun by a whole lot more than Mercury is ‘missing’ the Sun.
Basically because the planet the craft is being launched from is hurtling around the sun, you have to first cancel out all of that…let’s call it horizontal motion. Its the same way that orbits around earth work, you throw the thing horizontally fast enough and it will just fall around the planet. Want it to stop orbiting? Now you have to slow it down enough that it no longer falls around the planet but falls onto the planet.
Well while things are falling around (orbiting) the Earth, the Earth is falling around (orbiting) the sun. To launch something from earth and have it hit the sun, it first needs to get through all of Earth’s atmosphere, achieve orbit around the Earth, then exit the Earth’s sphere of orbital influence by increasing the height of the orbit so that the craft is no longer orbiting the Earth but orbiting the Sun, then decrease that orbit around the sun until eventually you get so close to the sun you fall into it rather than falling around it.
Now, if we were a real space program planning a real mission, we’d probably do something frugal and smart like using gravity assists to make the whole endeavor more achievable (which is exactly what the Parker Solar Probe did!)
Is it because of our position?
As in, is it fair to say in terms of potential gravitational energy, that we are basically outside of the “centre” of sun’s gravity?
Not sure what you mean by the question, but it’s because we’re in orbit around the sun. We’re already going way too fast, so you’d have to slow down, and slow down a lot.
It’s actually a kinda’ fun challenge in Kerbal Space Program to hit the sun, and KSP’s solar system is much smaller than ours (meaning everything is much closer and easier to hit).
I meant whether we are farther away from the sun or not. As in, would it take less energy to hit the sun if we started from Mercury.
But now I realize that it’s our momentum given earths orbit. So I guess it would be harder from mercury cause it’s going faster?
Nope, it’d me much easier from Mercury. A higher orbit has more energy. A space ship has to speed up to increase it’s orbit.
Think of it like the old expression about what an orbit even is: You’re still falling same as always, you’re just moving to the side fast enough to always miss. Earth is ‘missing’ the Sun by a whole lot more than Mercury is ‘missing’ the Sun.
Basically because the planet the craft is being launched from is hurtling around the sun, you have to first cancel out all of that…let’s call it horizontal motion. Its the same way that orbits around earth work, you throw the thing horizontally fast enough and it will just fall around the planet. Want it to stop orbiting? Now you have to slow it down enough that it no longer falls around the planet but falls onto the planet.
Well while things are falling around (orbiting) the Earth, the Earth is falling around (orbiting) the sun. To launch something from earth and have it hit the sun, it first needs to get through all of Earth’s atmosphere, achieve orbit around the Earth, then exit the Earth’s sphere of orbital influence by increasing the height of the orbit so that the craft is no longer orbiting the Earth but orbiting the Sun, then decrease that orbit around the sun until eventually you get so close to the sun you fall into it rather than falling around it.
Now, if we were a real space program planning a real mission, we’d probably do something frugal and smart like using gravity assists to make the whole endeavor more achievable (which is exactly what the Parker Solar Probe did!)