What if from now on, we start shooting all waste produced worldwide into space?

Leon Rozing

Abstract


This article explores the difficulties and the consequences of shooting all waste produced on Earth into space. It is found that if we do not want the waste to orbit Earth, the energy required to shoot one years’ worth of garbage into space would be one third of the total yearly energy consumption of humanity. If it is brought into orbit instead, in 50 years it will be massive enough to have a gravitational field strong enough to let people walk around on it as long as they do not go faster than 8 kmh-1.


Keywords


Physics; Solar system; Gravity/orbits; Escape velocity; Waste materials

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References


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