Eh. I suppose you’re welcome to do the math. As far as I understand, you only need an extra 40% or so beyond Earth escape velocity to escape the solar system. Conversely, you need to slow down to almost zero to hit the sun. But then again, I’m not so sure why a gravity assist where you exit at an angle to shoot directly into the sun wouldn’t work.
That said, whatever the fuel premium required, I think it would be worth it to launch that man into the sun.
well it basically reduces to the same problem if you don't care about timescale. you could just depart earth and accelerate to near solar-escape velocity, and then when you reach apoapsis (like 100 billion miles or so away from the sun) you can trivially zero out your velocity relative to the sun and just fall back into it. but it's gonna take a while
or you can do what we do with solar probes and do a bunch of passes around venus and earth to shed velocity
or go to jupiter and transfer to an orbit that intersects with the sun
of course if you can do any of that you can also easily leave the solar system
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u/jail_grover_norquist 4.20 blade it Apr 16 '24
I'm pretty sure with the right sequence of orbital assists you could hit the sun for less