Hitting the Sun is HARD

Listen to "The Paradox of Choice" for free at http://www.Audible.com/minutephysics This video is about the orbital mechanics of why it’s so hard to crash into the sun – the energy it takes to get there is astoundingly high, compared with leaving the solar system. Thanks to everyone who supports MinutePhysics on Patreon! http://www.patreon.com/minutephysics Link to Patreon supporters here: http://www.minutephysics.com/supporters.html Music by Nathaniel Schroeder, http://www.soundcloud.com/drschroeder REFERENCES International Atomic Energy Association report on nuclear waste storage: http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/LTS-RW_web.pdf And Slate’s article on actual potential solutions to nuclear waste: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/2009/11/atomic_priesthoods_thorn_landscapes_and_munchian_pictograms.html Info about sun dive delta v from low earth orbit http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3612/calculating-solar-system-escape-and-and-sun-dive-delta-v-from-lower-earth-orbit Oberth effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect More on rocket burns http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20100033146.pdf Sun dive probe http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100909-science-space-sun-new-nasa-solar-probe-plus-dive-bomb/ Other plans (jupiter assists) vs repeat Venus assist: http://solarprobe.gsfc.nasa.gov/spp_mission.htm Solar Probe Plus technical paper: http://issfd.org/ISSFD_2014/ISSFD24_Paper_S6-2_Guo.pdf Mercury Messenger Trajectory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MESSENGER#/media/File:MESSENGER_trajectory.svg Online calculator for orbital velocities, escape velocities, etc: http://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1360310353 Effective potential (possibly with interactive mathematica notebook?): http://physics.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/doku.php?id=activities:main&file=cfeffpotential https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_potential https://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Class/phy51/phy51/node8.html Equations for elliptical orbit speeds, etc: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsis MinutePhysics is on Google+ - http://bit.ly/qzEwc6 And facebook - http://facebook.com/minutephysics And twitter - @minutephysics Minute Physics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics -- all in a minute! Created by Henry Reich