Out of respect for the ongoing dialogue involving space weather down at the 'Lounge', I performed an academic exercise for solar wind to get in touch with my extraterrestrial side.
I don't live outside the magnetospheric cavity which Earth hides inside, and this type of arithmetic helps me glimpse what a first-order-reality experience with the solar wind might 'look' like.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's the thought experiment
and I'm speaking primarily to an American audience, so please excuse the US units )
1) Elon Musk launches a 1978 Volvo 760 Turbo Station Wagon for me into low Earth orbit, at 17,500-mph.
2) A booster will loft the car up to 60,000-miles above ground level (AGL).
3) This places the car outside the magnetosheath cavity which protects Earth from direct contact with the solar wind.
4) As the Volvo emerges from the dark side of the earth, and reaches the sunlight terminator across the planet, it will be facing, head-first, directly into the solar wind, of 2,000,000-mph velocity ( high end of it's range ).
5) Combined with its orbital velocity, the Volvo will experience a 'headwind' of 2,017,500-mph, or, 2,959,000-feet per second.
6) The Volvo has a frontal projected area of 23.25-square-feet.
7) The Volvo's drag coefficient is Cd 0.41.
8) Solar wind density ( rho)= 0.000000000002378 ( as per NASA/ Jet Propulsion Laboratory ).
9) Horsepower = 550-pound-feet per second.
10) Plugging the values into the plasmadynamic drag and power equations yield a drag force of 0.000305-pounds drag, and a horsepower requirement of 0.164528 (0.1226-kW ), or, 122.6-Watts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On what would otherwise be a 5,312-hour ( 221-1/3rd- days ) voyage to the Sun, the Volvo would require an impulse engine capable of maintaining three-ten-thousandths of a pound thrust to overcome the headwind, at least until it was overpowered by the Sun's gravitational field, after which it would require a retarding thrust, which varied as it closed on the Sun, if it intended to maintain velocity towards a soft landing on the Sun's 'dark side.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please, there's no reason to try and overthink this.
I had no expectations of what I'd find before running the numbers. I am surprised to see how feeble a 2-million-mph wind can actually be.
I mean it to be simplistic, and stand strictly on only the conditions provided.
My partner in crime, AeroStealth and I do these sorts of mind experiments routinely to help keep us grounded in physics reality. Driving on the moon would be one example.
A pocket calculator is capable of evoking a belly laugh at times.