Solar Sail Craft Damaged

C. Mattix writes "It looks like we won't know if the solar sail will work for a while. There was an accident prior to launch that will delay it for quite some time. Full story from Yahoo."

Comments

Good, solar sails are too dangerous to be allowed

[typical geek]

I'm glad it hasn't been launched, solar sails are far too dangerous to be allowed in orbit.

Before you condem me, think of the facts. They are talking about orbiting a huge, acre sized, piece of mylar, with controls to change it's orientation.

It's a giant space mirror!

For those of you didn't read the Mars trilogy, think back to the first time you played with a magnifying glass in your backyard.

Now, scale that up to a beam of light, a yard wide and more intense than a steel melting laser beam. Think what the beam of light could do to any cities or countries that don't kow-tow to the US-Russian space hegemony.

Worried yet?

Thus...

[Dancin_Santa]

Thus proving what we developers already know: QA is the cause of all our problems.

Dancin Santa

Re:This is not NASA

[s20451]

Actually there were space shuttle experiment in 1992 and 1996 to study the use of tethers. Look here for more. I believe at least one of these experiments ended in failure when the tether broke; both tethers and solar sails are highly susceptible to micrometeorite impacts.

NASA has also flown experimental ion propulsion technology on the Deep Space 1 mission, and has a research team at JPL investigating advanced propulsion concepts. You may have heard of a proposal for magnetic-assisted propulsion to travel to Pluto; IIRC that was one of theirs.

I don't know of any NASA attempt to use solar sails, though.