How much garbage are we talking about? The average person disposes of about 4.3 pound of garbage daily. Out of that, 55% ends up in a landfill. That's about 2.4 pound per person. The United States currently has a little less than 320 million people. That comes to 768 million pounds of garbage going into landfills EACH DAY.
The Saturn V rockets were designed for a payload capacity of 261,000 pounds for low Earth orbit. Let's use that number anyway, and pretend that they can send that much all the way to the Sun. That would mean that we would need about 3000 Saturn V rockets EACH DAY to send our non-degradable garbage to the Sun. That's $3 TRILLION a day, or over $1 QUADRILLION a year. And this is just for the US, and does not take into account the rest of the world.
So again I ask, WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR IT?
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Angela D say: the cost is prohibitive.
a launch failure would spread dirty diapers and coffee grounds over a large area. though for some places i've been to this would be an improvement... :-)
just because we can't see a use for this stuff doesn't mean our descendants won't.
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quantumclaustrophobe say: While it would be possible - the cost of the program would be too great to sustain; And, it would be severely limited - the amount of trash we're able to produce would far out-pace the ability to send this to the sun... Also, consider an accident... if toxic waste were included on the rocket, an explosion would spread the waste over a wide area; if it were spent nuclear fuel - it would be worlds largest 'dirty bomb'....
While not a bad idea - the sun would make an excellent incinerator - the cost of the program and our current launching ability just aren't up to the task.
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Donut Tim say: No, sorry.
First, because there is way too much of it to be able to get it off the ground using all of Earth's resources.
Another reason is that sending something into the Sun is not a “point and shoot” problem. The Earth and everything on it is orbiting the Sun at about 30 kilometers per second. If you send a ship in the opposite direction than Earth’s, it would orbit the Sun at a closer distance.