You cannot launch rockets “directly at the sun”. We’re orbiting the sun. All the rockets we launch are orbiting the sun by default. The way you hit the sun is by slowing down the rocket from the Earth’s starting orbital velocity so that it can fall into the sun. You actually have to point the rocket away from the orbital vector of the Earth which would be perpendicular to the sun and fire the rocket to slow it down.
Side note and fun fact, it takes less energy to speed up a rocket from Earth’s orbital velocity to escape the entire solar system than it takes slow it down to reach the sun.
It is actually more energy efficient to fly away from the Sun first, since the required orbital velocity you need to cancel out goes down as you get further. So launching missiles towards the sun from Pluto would be way easier, in terms of acceleration needed
That’s not true either, it takes way more energy to drop your orbit the further out you are, regardless of eccentricity. It’s easier to curcularize near apoapsis, easier to change apoapsis and orbital planes at periapsis. The trick, however, is that bonus from periapsis works on being at any periapsis (ie, a near miss of a planet), just need the speed boost from being nearest the gravity well. That’s what gravitational slingshots are. I think a sun trajectory uses Jupiter a few times for maneuvers.
If only there was a word that meant we used the path of least resistance.
We do a little bit of trolling
Yet another piece of evidence that the SGC is still around
Indeed.
