Heliotosis

The so-called solar wind

The solar "wind" is absurdly thin. At the Earth's radius from the Sun, about 4 hydrogens per cubic centimeter, or 4 million hydrogens per cubic meter. It moves fast, perhaps 500 km/s, so that 2e12 hydrogens pass through a square meter per second, or 2e18 hydrogens pass through a square kilometer.

Avogadro's number, 6e23, is the number of hydrogens in a gram, so the solar wind is about 3 picograms per square meter per second, or 3 micrograms per square kilometer per second (again, at Earth's solar radius).

Solar wind "pressure" is the mass flux times the velocity, 3e-15 kg/m²-s * 5e5 m/s = 1.5e-9 kg/m-s² or 1.5 nanoPascals. Solar light pressure (for a black absorbent surface) is 1366 W/m² divided by the speed of light (3e8m/s), or 4.5 microPascals, 3000 times solar wind pressure. Solar wind has practically zero orbit-modifying effect, light pressure much more.

The Sun facing area of the Earth is the polar radius (6357 km) times the equatorial radius (6378km) times pi, around 1.3e8 km², so (ignoring Earth's magnetic field) the mass of hydrogen intersecting the entire Earth per second is around 400 grams per second, or 0.4 kg/s, a bit less than one pound per second.

A typical weather balloon is a meter in diameter, about 4 cubic meters, 4000 liters. Hydrogen gas at STP is 0.09 g/L, so a slightly pressurized weather balloon also holds about 0.4 kilograms. Worldwide, perhaps 900 weather stations launch two balloons per day, so the solar wind delivers 50 times that amount (actually, some weather balloons are filled with inflammable, and irreplaceable, helium).

The Earth is tiny and the solar system is vast; a sphere at Earth radius ( 1.496e8 km ) has an area of 2.8e17 km², so the entire solar wind output averages 8e8 kilograms per second.

For comparison, sea level air pressure results from a column of air massing 1e4 kg/m², and a typical coastal wind might be 8 m/s, so a 10 kilometer wide wind surface conveys 8e8 kilograms per second, as much as the total solar wind to all of the vast solar system.

So, the solar wind is a considerable force at the whole-solar-system scale, but practically irrelevant for engineered systems at the planetary or smaller scale. Less annoying than bad breath (halitosis) in a room on Earth, hence "helio-tosis".

In particular, the solar wind will NOT blow away space debris, macroscopic or molecular, unless it is already in interplanetary space. Interplanetary space starts at a planet's "Hill sphere", which extends about 1.5 million kilometers around the Earth, about 4 times lunar orbit radius or 36 times geosynchronous orbit radius.