We should send all our rubbish to Venus or to the sun. Let it burn up in them

seamus wrote: »

The amount of energy required to launch rubbish into orbit is considerably larger than just burning it. A Falcon 9 has a payload of 22 tonnes and each launch releases about 350 tonnes of CO2. Where just burning the 22 tonnes will release about 22 tonnes of CO2 (give or take)

Even if you were to strip down the rocket so it could carry more, you're never going to bridge that gap that makes a launch 16 times more expensive than burning.

Unless we come up with a more efficient method of launching rockets (nothing is on the horizon), or other methods of getting things into orbit - like a skyhook - then recycling, composting and incineration are the only way forward.

seamus wrote: »

It's an old joke.

But it's also a theoretical way of putting things into orbit.

Basically you put a space station into orbit with a long cable attached to it. When you want to put something into orbit, you fly an aircraft up to meet the end of the cable, attach your payload to it, and then it gets hoisted up by the space station into orbit.

You also have a space elevator, which is the same idea except the space station is in a geostationary orbit, connected to the surface with a big steel cable. You can then send things up and down to the space station using the cable.

The net energy required to send something up the cable into orbit is technically the same, but you can use other forms of propulsion, like electric motors, that create far less pollution.

Both ideas are theoretically possible, the physics are sound, but beyond our current technology level.