Don't know, but I don't think we'd want mountains of trash (whatever its composition) to wind up orbiting Earth. AFAIK a lot of energy/thrust/velocity is necessary to escape Earth gravity altogether. I'd guess launching stuff into deep space is expensive. Considering how much trash humans generate, well, space disposal isn't practical.
Besides "trash" could be a useful resource. To some extent it's already done. Some is convertible to energy. Other fractions (plastics, metals) recycled to make new stuff, etc. Could these uses be extended? I can't say, but more R&D is likely a better investment vs. rocketing trash away.
> AFAIK a lot of energy/thrust/velocity is necessary to escape Earth gravity altogether.
I was responding to the claim that it would be easier to send trash to Jupiter, etc. than the sun. Yes, escaping Earth's gravity in the first place would be a major expense.
> I don't think we'd want mountains of trash (whatever its composition) to wind up orbiting Earth.
While I probably agree, there is a lot more room up there than down here!
It takes more energy to hit the sun than it does to escape the solar system entirely. Earth's orbital velocity is closer to solar escape velocity than it is to 0 (or any velocity for an orbit with a periapsis that intersects Sol and an apoapsis at Earth's orbit).
For both Mars and the Sun, we need to escape Earth's gravity, so the energy seems roughly the same there.
If we direct an object at the Sun or Mars, with the same momentum, it will eventually get to either. What is the difference?
If you mean it takes 55 times more energy to get to the Sun or Mars in the same fixed time interval, that I could see. (For our theoretical space trash, the start of this subthread, it doesn't matter how long it takes.)
You're forgetting that we're all orbiting around the sun.
Just escaping earths gravity puts you an orbit around the sun at the same distance as earth. With a bit more speed you get into an orbit a bit closer or further depending on the direction you took. More explanation with more exact numbers: https://space.stackexchange.com/a/45619
> While I probably agree, there is a lot more room up there than down here!
Even I can pick up the joking intent here, but just for others reading, the issue with stuff in space isn't physical volume. The problem is intersecting orbits. Even if we had the lift capacity for it, there aren't enough orbits to put all our garbage in without causing collisions and probably Kessler Syndrome. There's orders of magnitude more garbage than satellites we could ever want.
