I'm an idea guy, here, not so much an execution guy. So the best we can hope for is to create a number of small trash satellites that will orbit in extremely close proximity to the sun? These satellites, can we make them out of some material that will burn up and destroy the trash in the ensuing conflagration?Agree with all of this.Electric cars aren't the only advancement towards less oil usage. Our company is working on a fully electric locomotive. Semis are on their way as well.
Thing is, we still need to do better than electric. In 50 years we are going to have to send shuttles into space with payloads of dead batteries. The electricity needed to charge the batteries needs to get cleaner, etc.
We're moving in the right direction, at least.
Fire trash directly into the sun!
Totally nerdy space trivia that no one asked for: Unless one is willing to wait for many, many years*, it is actually staggeringly difficult to fire anything into the Sun, or to even get anything all that close to the Sun. It would actually take less energy to send something on an escape velocity out of the Solar System entirely than to send something into the Sun. it takes roughly 29 km/s of deceleration to hit the Sun. While it takes 42 km/s of acceleration to hit solar escape velocity, the Earth is already traveling 30 km/s, so for something launched from Earth, you only need to add 12 km/s of acceleration to leave the Solar System.
* In the tiny chance that anyone cares, the "many years" option is a bi-elliptic transfer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-elliptic_transfer).
I must confess, I've been sort of taken with the idea of space trash since I first learned about the accumulating manmade junk in low orbit when I was a kid. Package all that s**t up and get it out of our neighborhood. Send it to Space New Jersey.
