Posted by
michael
on from the burial-not-exactly-the-right-word dept.
roman_mir writes "Celestis is the name of a company that is offering space burials for some $11K USD. Isn't this nice, like there is not enough garbage in space already... So, how many of you want to be buried in space? I want to burn in the Sun (or at least the egomaniacal part of me.)"
Cemeteries are landfills
by
ObviousGuy
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Take a look around a cemetery some time and just try to absorb how much human garbage is buried there. From alcoholics to wife-beaters, these people are giving us the finger by taking up precious land into perpetuity.
Cultures which practice cremation have a much better idea. Just burn everyone to a crisp and reduce their mass to a couple ounces of dust instead of taking up several cubic yards of space.
Sending your dead ash into space sounds great.
-- I have been pwned because my/. password was too easy to guess.
Plus, you don't need extra speed to get you out of Earth's gravity well. Even if you travel at only one meter per second away from the Earth, you will still eventually get outside its gravity well. You only need to reach escape velocity if you plan to reach a velocity and then coast from there on out.
No. The energy required to achieve escape velocity is the same as going one meter per second. If you're going one m/s, you need to fight the pull of gravity, but if you're going escape velocity you're speed would exactly compensate for gravity.
You just aim yourself at a planet and slingshot yourself off it to gain some pretty good speed. Then, you fly by another planet and use its gravity well not to change the magnitude of your velocity (although you'll do that too),
This wouldn't do anything. You don't gain energy (or velocity) by slingshotting off another planet. The energy you gain going in is the same as the energy 'given back' when you go out.
but to change the direction you're travelling. If you do this right, you can be going straight towards the Sun at a very high rate of speed and with no component of your velocity that is perpendicular to the line between you and the Sun.
This wouldn't work without some sort of guidance system, which would be a lot more expensive. And if they had a guidance system, then it would be easier to just go straight to it anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Take a look around a cemetery some time and just try to absorb how much human garbage is buried there. From alcoholics to wife-beaters, these people are giving us the finger by taking up precious land into perpetuity.
Cultures which practice cremation have a much better idea. Just burn everyone to a crisp and reduce their mass to a couple ounces of dust instead of taking up several cubic yards of space.
Sending your dead ash into space sounds great.
I have been pwned because my
Right... and there's no way to work around this, huh? For someone with a user id under 700k, you ain't so bright.
I've had this sig for three days.
No. The energy required to achieve escape velocity is the same as going one meter per second. If you're going one m/s, you need to fight the pull of gravity, but if you're going escape velocity you're speed would exactly compensate for gravity.
You just aim yourself at a planet and slingshot yourself off it to gain some pretty good speed. Then, you fly by another planet and use its gravity well not to change the magnitude of your velocity (although you'll do that too),
This wouldn't do anything. You don't gain energy (or velocity) by slingshotting off another planet. The energy you gain going in is the same as the energy 'given back' when you go out.
but to change the direction you're travelling. If you do this right, you can be going straight towards the Sun at a very high rate of speed and with no component of your velocity that is perpendicular to the line between you and the Sun.
This wouldn't work without some sort of guidance system, which would be a lot more expensive. And if they had a guidance system, then it would be easier to just go straight to it anyway.
IANAP (physicist), but I will be in two years.