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Solar Sail Will Work, says Planetary Society

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the back-and-forth dept.

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."

5 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. COSMOS Project by Vargasan · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    What about the KOSMOS Project?

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    Putting the romance back into necromancer.
  2. Re:Yeah, BUT.... by BoomerSooner · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Just got to keep your eyes open for those Grid Bugs!!!!

  3. Yeah... by VladTheBad · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Grid bugs and 32mb FX graphics in the eMac huh?

  4. That Gold Guy by fm6 · · Score: 2, Offtopic
    Thomas Gold seems to associate himself with rather a lot of weird theories. He was one of those behind the "rocks from Antartica prove there's life on Mars" weirdness. (Yeah, I know it's a popular theory, but it's always struck me as a nasty stretch.) He's got a complicated theory that I won't even begin to describe, concerning subterranean microbes, helium concentrations, and non-biological origins of petroleum.

    And he's got the biggest feature of the crank, a martyr complex:

    I can give you there an example from my own experience where, when I was still very green and naive, just after the war, I had worked on the theory of hearing: how the inner ear works. As I had just come from wartime radar, I was full of signal processing methods and sophistication and receiver techniques and all that, and there I found myself discussion the physiology of hearing in those terms. I thought it was very appropriate because it is a very fine scientific instrument that we were discussing, the inner ear. But I had to address myself to an audience of otologists - the doctors and medical people who deal with hearing - the only ones who were doing any kind of research in this field. The mismatch was obvious; it was completely hopeless. There was no common language, and of course the medical profession just would not learn what it would take to understand the subject. On the other hand, they sure made their judgments about the matter, without having any basis at all.
    (That's from a journal article he wrote.) Now from a purely scientific point of view, one is inclined to accept that Gold was the victim of medical close mindedness. The notion of "active hearing" does make a lot of sense, and medicos are notoriously rigid with respect to scientific issues. But other physical scientists have managed to bridge this gap: Norbert Weiner comes to mind. In fact, the very theories that Gold was trying to apply to hearing were originated by just that kind of cross-discipline collaboration.

    I have to suspect that Gold likes to play the contrarian just to avoid dealling with his on collaboration issues.

  5. Re:hi. by degauss · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    yeah... ::Note to self... don't submit to /. really late at night::

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    CoyboyNeal is God