Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!unido!tub!tmpmbx!netmbx!alderaan
From: alderaan@netmbx.UUCP (Thomas Cervera)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: The sun as a trashcan (was : Plutonium)
Message-ID: <1255@netmbx.UUCP>
Date: 27 Aug 88 14:04:33 GMT
Organization: netmbx Public Access Unix, Berlin, West Germany
Lines: 42

This is a reply to a posting someone left here some hours before (lost
the origional message, sorry)

He said, he heard from one of his friends (dunno exactly), that it would
be better to dump all the dangerous Plutonium into the sun to 'catch two
birds with only one stone'. On one hand, his friend said, you would get
rid of all the Pt on Earth in a clean way, on the other hand, you could
send out some signs of live (Pt isn't normal in the Sun's spectrum, I guess)
because of emissions caused by ionisized Pt. 

He replied, that it wouldn't be possible to leave terrestial orbit (if I
understood right), because spacecrafts would be too slow to do the job,
and all the Pt wouldn't be enough to send recognizable signals.

In my eyes the idea to dump Plutonium into the sun could become reality.
If we can send spacecrafts to the inner planets of our solar system,
I think, it must be possible to let something like that crash into the
sun, or not ?
But if it's possible, why don't we send all our dangerous (radioactive)
garbage to the sun ? Here in Germany, they don't know where to go with
it.
At this time, U.S.A. and USSR destroy their expensive short range missles
'cause they are (thankgod !) no longer needed to respond the 'threat from
the other side'.
Why don't they modify them to be able to leave the earth's gravity
field ? The payload could be Pt or other dangerous stuff ...

Sending recognizable signals to other civilizations with those few tons
of Plutonium we have on Earth isn't possible, I think. 
You won't find enough Pt in the whole solar system. And if you would dump so
much of this stuff into the sun that there would be a possible success, 
this should affect the Sun's physics in a negative way, I guess.

--

alderaan
OP RKOpdp (RSTS/E)
FB Mathematik/Informatik
RKO Berlin

Dieffenbachstrasze 60-61
1000 Berlin 61