Would gas giants work as waste disposal sites?
In my novel, the many moons of Jupiter and Saturn have been colonized, but I'm running into some logistical problems - namely, waste disposal. My first instinct was to dump it on-moon; while this is fine on places like Io, for others, like Europa, it won't work due to environmental reasons. So, would colonists be able to launch their waste into the hearts of Jupiter and Saturn and let the immense gravity do all the dirty work?
Some clarification by request: For purposes of ease-of-story and narrative, sub-light drives are common, but not very cheap. Admittedly, the exact math and speeds elude me, but I would put it comparable, price-wise, to commercial shipping on Earth today (expensive, but cost-effective). The waste, by and large, would be the everyday waste of colonists - any place with radioactive or dangerous waste would have long ago stopped worrying about standards of living, similar to a coal mining operation today.
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Yes, but for a different reason.
This is basically what happened with the Cassini probe, which was sent to crash into Saturn in 2017. However, the reason the probe was successfully disposed of wasn't because Saturn's a gas giant; it's because the spacecraft burned up upon entering Saturn's atmosphere. The same things happen with meteors, and would happen with spacecraft returning from Earth if they didn't have heat shields. They'd be burnt to a crisp.
Now, the waste might not burn up completely. Skylab didn't, in the 1970s; some pieces of debris hit Australia. Fortunately, Saturn's interior is hot (at the center, it's twice as hot as the surface of the Sun) and under a lot of pressure, and anything that survives entering the atmosphere will not survive for a whole lot longer.
That said, as folks have pointed out, this might not be phenomenally appealing. There are reasons for and against sending your rubbish to a gas giant.
Reasons against doing it:
- It takes time and energy and money and labor, and those are all in short supply in space.
- Who wants to waste rockets?
- Can't you just dump it elsewhere?
- Some of it can be reused.
Reasons for doing it:
- Let's try to not contaminate the moon we might be trying to study.
- Nobody wants nuclear waste in their
backyardspace colony.
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