Solar Sail Will Work, says Planetary Society

degauss writes "In response to Cornell Physicist Thomas Gold's paper declaring the theroy behind solar sails flawed (previously mentioned in this Slashdot article), Louis Freedman, executive director of the Planetary Society (the organization behind the COSMOS project), has written a brief rebuttal to the claims in Dr. Gold's paper regarding the feasibility of solar sails for use as a method of transportation in space. He does not go in to detail with equations and such, but does give an overview of the reasons he believes Gold's hypothesis is incorrect."

Comments

Wehrner Von Braun said it best

[Raul654]

I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.

Re:Another indicator

[Xtifr]

this alone calls into question Dr. Gold's ability

Depends on when he did this "seminal work on the steady-state theory". I'm in my 40s, and I remember when it was still considered acceptable to have some reasonable doubt about the big bang. If he's in his 70s, and did this work, say, 50 years ago, it's possible that the work was considered completely solid at the time. And the word "seminal" does imply that it was a while back.

I'm reminded of Stephen J. Gould's defense of the Bishop of Usher (the one who determined that the universe was created in 4004BC). Looking at that date based on what we know now, it's easy to assume that he was a religious fanatic, but if you look at what was known at the time he did the work, it turns out that he actually did some pretty solid scientific research to come up with that date. The fact that he was working from a set of bad assumptions was not really his fault.

So, back to Gold, if he's still a proponent of the steady-state, then he can probably be dismissed as a quack, but the fact that he once worked on the theory doesn't really say anything one way or the other.