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23 points

Huh. I would have thought that once they break orbit that the sun’s gravity well would do the heavy lifting pulling.

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36 points

If you care to learn orbital mechanics, Kerbal Space Program is a great teacher.

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1 point

That one’s been sitting unplayed in my library for a very long time. I guess it’s time to give it a shot.

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3 points

And if you want more complicated orbital mechanics there’s a ksp mod: Principia which adds n-body orbital mechanics over ksp’s relatively simple patched conic orbital simulation.

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19 points

“Breaking orbit” still leaves you in almost the same orbit around the sun as the earth. You need to slow down a lot to bring the periapsis of the orbit within the suns surface.

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1 point
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16 points

Imagine that you’re standing on a train and have a baseball. If you throw the ball off the train, the ball will still have momentum in the direction of the train’s movement.

If you want to throw the ball to a friend the train just passed, you have to be able to throw the ball faster than the train is moving or it will never reach them.

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2 points

Now all im imagineing is a ball floating mid air and it’s beautiful

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3 points

Mythbusters did this! (Well, the ball fell to the ground, but for a split second it looked like it was hovering after being shot out of a cannon.)

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11 points
*

once you break out of earth orbit you are now in an orbit around the sun, similar to earths.

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11 points

The vessel would still have a lot of speed after escaping earth’s orbit, so the trajectory would become a large orbit around the sun. You still have to slow down by about ~30km/s (or ~100 000 km/h) to make that orbit intercept with the sun’s surface.

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