How Close Can You Get to The Sun And Survive

Of all the bodies in our solar system, the sun is probably the one we want to give the widest berth. It gushes radiation, and even though its surface is the coolest part of the star, it burns at about 9,940°F, hot enough to incinerate just about any material. As such, there are no plans to send a manned mission in its direction anytime soon, but it can't hurt to figure out at what distance a person would want to turn back. You can get surprisingly close. The sun is about 93 million miles away from Earth, and if we think of that distance as a football field, a person starting at one end zone could get about 95 yards before burning up. That said, an astronaut so close to the sun is way, way out of position. The technology in our current space suits really isn't designed to withstand deep space. The standard space suit will keep an astronaut relatively comfortable at external temperatures reaching up to 248°. Heat coming off the sun dissipates over distance, but a person drifting in space would begin encountering that kind of heat some three million miles from the sun. It would then be a matter of time before the astronaut died. Above 248°, the suit would transform into a close-fitting sauna as the temperature would climb above 125° and the person would become dehydrated and pass out, eventually dying of heatstroke. Riding in the space shuttle, though, someone could get much closer to our star. The ship's reinforced carbon-carbon heat shield is designed to withstand temperatures of up to 4,700° to ensure that the spacecraft and its passengers can survive the friction heat generated when it reenters the atmosphere from orbit. If the shield wrapped the entire shuttle, astronauts could fly to within 1.3 million miles of the sun. But the integrity of the shield degrades rapidly above 4,700°, and the cockpit would begin to cook. It is highly advised to have your ship turning away from the sun well before that point. Much hotter than that, the shields would fail altogether, and the vehicle would combust in less than a minute. Of course, just getting that close to the sun would be quite an accomplishment. There are a couple of other things to consider: namely that cosmic radiation would probably kill you before you reach a complete half the distance to the sun. Modern shielding against space radiation is still quite poor, and before trying to make sure astronauts won't melt on their way to the sun, they need to make sure their bodies aren't irradiated. Besides that, one solution that may help future astronauts make it closer to the sun would be mirrored shielding. The 2007 film Sunshine depicted a spacecraft fitted with an incredibly huge optical shield designed to bounce the sun's rays away, which could help ensure the spacecraft stays cool enough. Sunshine also raises another point: just because you can get close to the sun, doesn't mean you'll be able to actually see the sun. You'll need to block out the rays by about 98 percent in order to actually get a view that won't turn you blind.