Yes and no. The gravity of the sun will attract the rocket, but there are other things out in space besides the sun.
The problem then is other planets will start whipping the garbage rocket around who knows where. Could even come back around and smash into earth. Same problem with the sun, actually. It’s quite hard to hit something that’s that big when we’re this far away. If you miss even a fraction of a decimal of a degree, the trash rocket will swing around and you’re back to planetary hot potato.
It’s easier to sling the rocket past the south or north pole at a right angle to the solar plane. Up or down it’ll either keep going till it’s another suns problem or it joins the Oort cloud, which is kinda like a giant trash dump for everything that didn’t make it into our solar system when the sun formed.
Bimfred@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Because if you launch something from Earth, you inherit the Earth’s orbital speed around the Sun. At that point, whatever you launched, will just continue to orbit the Sun. It takes less energy to accelerate to a solar system exit trajectory than it does to scrub off all of the excess velocity and end up on a trajectory that intersects the Sun.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 month ago
But does it matter what speed the garbage is going at when it hits the sun?
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No, but it’s going too fast sideways. It would miss the sun. You need to slow it down by the same apeed that Earth is moving, stopping its sideways motion and letting it drop into the sun.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 month ago
But do you need to slow it down all the way? Can’t you just slow it down enough to get the ball in an elliptical orbit where the trash ball gets very close to the ball of plasma?