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by HappyRobot 2962 days ago
I think the drawback for space disposal is the risk of rocket failure. If a rocket explodes with nuclear waste on board, the waste would spread over a large area. It's safer at the moment to consolidate nuclear waste in small areas away from civilization.
1 comments
lightbyte 2962 days ago
>If a rocket explodes with nuclear waste on board, the waste would spread over a large area.

Space is very big. Is it actually likely that said waste spreading would even be noticeable?

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diggan 2962 days ago
Think what the argument against it is that the rocket explodes during launch, before actually leaving earth behind. Then it would most probably be noticeable.
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Theodores 2962 days ago
In the 1950s they thought that Nevada was very big and that the waste wouldn't even be noticeable.

They also thought the Pacific Ocean was very big and that the waste wouldn't even be noticeable.

Car drivers still think this way with their toxic emissions. It is very human to think 'out of sight out of mind' rather than 'take only photos, leave only footprints', so maybe it is actually fine to trash space with waste.

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larkeith 2961 days ago
This... isn't really relevant for space. The amount of emptiness so massively outweighs the quantity of matter and energy it would be literally impossible to utilize a nontrivial portion of the volume available.

The only case in which releasing waste into space is problematic is when it's within a highly-utilized area, for example LEO. In the future, we may potentially use various transfer orbits and/or the Interplanetary Transport Network [1], so we should presumably avoid dumping there, but even within the solar system, the sheer volume of vacuum dwarfs any possible use.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Netwo...

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monocasa 2962 days ago
When a rocket explodes, it's normally in the atmosphere right over an ocean.
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lightbyte 2962 days ago
I misunderstood what you were saying than, I thought you meant the rocket was exploding when it was already far into space away from Earth.
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noir_lord 2962 days ago
If it blows up 500m above the launch pad you aren't in space.
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