this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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Launching anything into the sun is a very bad idea unless you very specifically need it to be in the sun, because it takes so much energy. It pretty much only makes sense to send probes and nothing else.
If I'm reading the delta-V map on Wikipedia correctly escaping the solar system is cheaper by about 97.7% than shooting something directly into the sun (18009 m/s vs 790371 m/s from launch). Reducing orbital energy is paradoxically really expensive...
Even just getting something to orbit the sun closer than mercury is more expensive than shooting it out of the solar system entirely.
So yeah looking at those numbers I think space mining is a lot more practicable than I though, delta-v from the moon to the kuiper belt (including capture burns in the kuiper belt around asteroids/planetoids) is cheaper than from the earth to the moon, only problem is travel time.
Can't believe I didn't think of that. I normally know better, you're right of course.