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Why is the Sun so hard to reach?

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The Sun pulls on everything, so flying there should be easy... right? Not quite. Earth races around the Sun at about 30 km/s, and anything we launch keeps that speed, so it swings around the Sun instead of falling in. To reach the Sun, you have to lose most of that speed. NASA's Parker Solar Probe needed a huge rocket and seven trips past Venus to do it.

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Transcript

  1. Sef The Sun pulls everything in. So flying there is easy, right?
  2. Tiggy Nope. Earth races around the Sun, at thirty kilometers per second.
  3. Tiggy Anything we launch keeps that speed, so it swings around the Sun instead.
  4. Tiggy To reach the Sun, you must lose most of that speed.
  5. Tiggy Parker Solar Probe needed a huge rocket, and seven trips past Venus.
  6. Sef Harder than going to Mars?
  7. Tiggy Fifty-five times more energy, says NASA.

Sources

  1. NASA: It's Surprisingly Hard to Go to the Sun nasa.gov
  2. NASA Goddard: visualization + transcript svs.gsfc.nasa.gov
  3. NASA Earth Fact Sheet nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov
  4. Johns Hopkins APL: seventh Venus flyby jhuapl.edu

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