Flight Question Slingshot around the sun

[C3PO]

Or you could do a retrograde sling around Jupiter, and kill your heliocentric angular momentum that way.

You can't get anywhere near that close with a single Jupiter sling. It will most probably take decades or even centuries.

 

[Dude]

You can't get anywhere near that close with a single Jupiter sling. It will most probably take decades or even centuries.

Actually, you can. I'll have an example for you and the OP later today.

With that said ... Gentlemen, what is your point? Seriously.

This thread started because someone saw something he thought was pretty cool on a fictional television show that features faster-than-light travel, aliens who all breathe Earth-style air and speak perfect English, and numerous other absurdities. In this show, a spacecraft got very near a star, did a big propulsive maneuver, and got a big impact. The show, which was notoriously sloppy with anything approaching real science, incorrectly called the maneuver a "slingshot." The OP took the show at its word, used the same terminology, and asked if it's possible to "slingshot around the sun to gain speed."

The way I see it, there are two ways to answer the OP's question.

1) Ignore the propulsive maneuver in the fictional example and say "no, you can't do a slingshot around the Sun, because in this frame of reference it's not moving"; or,

2) Ignore (or better still, briefly mention) the mistake in terminology, then say "they called it the wrong thing, but if you do like they did and do a big burn near the Sun you will get a big impact."

Now, let me make two things very clear. First ... all my remarks in this thread, including the promised example, are directed toward the OP and his original question.

And second ... there is absolutely no reason to assume that the OP is anything other than an eight-year-old who is just discovering science, Orbiter, etc. Bearing that in mind, and that the rest of you have already made answer #1 very clear, I'm giving him answer #2. And you have no way of knowing this, but I do have some small experience as a teacher, and based on that experience believe #2 to be the right call. Period.

Now, you all seem to be implying that answers grounded in perspective #2 are somehow wrong, inappropriate, unfair, unrealistic, etc. Well, the OP didn't ask, "how would you even get near the Sun in the first place," "what's the Oberth effect," etc.

So I repeat, what is your point ... other than puerile attempts at the tired old Internet pasttime of "one-up the newbie"?

 

[flytandem]

This thread reminds me of a challenge we played with a few years ago. The goal was to see who could get the greatest speed leaving the solar system starting with a stock deltaglider sitting on the Earth. We measured the speed as what speed the ship had when crossing something like 25 or 30 AU. Anyway the best we could come up with was to use a cassini type of sling around Venus and Earth to hit Jupiter then sling Jupiter to a solar orbit that had a Pe just barely above the surface of the sun. I know it would get toasty but deltaglider is fictitious anyway. Then at the Pe of the solar orbit do a prograde burn with all remaining fuel including all RCS except maybe spare a kilo for some rotational to turn to view points of interest while leaving the solar system.

What I recall surprising was that whether one fell from Jupiter or from Neptune as the choice for slinging to the sun, the speed at Pe was similar. But the change in speed measured at 25 AU was big with even small changes back at the Pe. So the trick was to somehow get to a low solar Pe using as little fuel as possible to get there.

 

[Ghostrider]

Excuse me, but isn't the "solar slingshot at warp" in ST simply a way to time-travel? When you have FTL, and M/A propulsion, what are you doing with slingshots anyway? There was a solar slingshot maneouver in "Voyage to the planets" too which may be more pertinent, since it was during a Grand Tour of the Solar System. Apart from the drama of getting close to the Sun (and fatally irradiating one of the crew) there was no real reason to do that.