system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
When sending a probe to the sun, does the suns gravity assist in how fast the probe arrives?
gpt
Everything that orbits the sun is falling towards it.  It just has so much lateral velocity that it keeps missing the surface of the sun.  The more lateral velocity there is, the further away it orbits.  

Think of it this way.  

If you throw a baseball hard enough it will miss the ground because the surface of the earth curves away from it faster than it's falling.  If you take away the atmospheric drag then it never slows down and will keep going around the earth in a circular orbit.  That's what the earth is doing with the sun.

To reach the sun, you have to first jump far enough away from the earth that you won't fall back towards it.  Basically, you have to get to the point where the sun has a larger effect on you than the earth does.  Then you have to slow down your lateral velocity that you picked up from starting your journey on the earth enough that you stop missing the surface of the sun.

As it turns out, this is an insane amount of velocity that you have to counteract.

If you're able to shed that velocity, then the suns gravity will assist you in getting the rest of the way there, because your baseball will have slowed enough to hit the ground.