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A comment on Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Overcome Existing Barriers to Nuclear. Parent comment

Re:Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Overcome Existing Barriers... by mac01021 on Monday May 23, 2016 @07:00AM (#11753033)
It isn't sufficient to launch in the general direction of the sun, using the minimum energy required to escape earth's gravity?
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Re:Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Overcome Existing Barriers... by Symmetry on Monday May 23, 2016 @10:29AM (#11754046)
The reason the Earth doesn't fall into the sun is that it's moving quickly enough that the centripetal force balances the Sun's gravity. If you escape the Earth's gravity well and give it a small push it would still have nearly as much orbital energy as the Earth and way more than Venus, which hadn't fallen into the sun either.

To slow down enough that you could fall into the sun you need to kill 30 km/s of velocity. To go fast enough to escape the solar system you only need about 15 km/s. And crashing into Jupiter is even cheaper than that.

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Re:Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Overcome Existing Barriers... by cmrx64 on Monday May 23, 2016 @07:35AM (#11753167)
No. For an entertaining explanation why, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNS6VKNXY6s
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Re:Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Overcome Existing Barriers... by gus_massa on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @12:01AM (#11758910)
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1244/ (explanation and more details https://explainxkcd.com/1244/ )
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