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

FR1ST PS0T

[Anonymous Coward]

GAY NIGGERS RAWK

frist psot!!

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm frist! frsity frosty frist psossst!

fissst psfdafodfotoo1!!!!!

woot!

WOOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

First POST!!

COSMOS Project

[Vargasan]

What about the KOSMOS Project?

You Fail!

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy Copy-and-Paste, Batman!

Re:Yeah, BUT....

[BoomerSooner]

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

YOU FAIL IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU FAIL! FAILY FAILY FAIL IT!

FAIL ITTALLYDIDDALYDOODALY!!!!

FAIL!

(will the lameness filter catch all my caps cause they are like yealling? no, never. muwahahah!)

Some important news about Slashdot, please read

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted from the nero-online.org Troll Library

Following my work researching The Linux Gay Conspiracy, I am saddened to announced that I have discovered yet another orgy of perverted heterophobic values. My claim lies with the Slashdot mangement.

First, what kind of name is Slashdot? This is obviously a code word in the homosexual community for something perverted.
Slashdot is an anagram of LAD SHOTS, which refers to Slashdot's pedophile agenda and T ASS HOLD, which refers to some gay sexual posistion that Michael and CmdrTaco enjoy.

The 'editors' of Slashdot, as they call themselves, are homosexual swingers with cleverly disguised nicknames.

CmdrTaco (aka "Rob" Malda) is the "head" honcho of Slashdot. Cmdr obviously refers to his desire to dominate over his gay partners, and Taco is obviously a sly reference to his colon. Update: It is well known that Taco claims to be married to Kate Fent. No one really believes that 'she' is actually his wife. We have proof that this 'she' is actually a he. It turns out that Kathleen Fent is an anagram of KHAN FELT EN ET. So this Kate of his is really Khan who "felt in it". I will not describe what that means as I am sure you can imagine yourself.

Michael Sims, who goes as 'michael' on Slashdot, is a well known thug and advancer of homosexual agenda. His name is an anagram of ASS CHIME MIL which obviously refers to his desire to flaunt his lower organ.Update: It turns out that Michael Sims is also an anagram of ASS LICE, HMM, I?. That is so sick that words cannot describe the horror.

Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day is Slashdot's Mac propagandist. Macintosh computers are well known as the Gay computer due to their homosexual colors and stylings. An email exchange between 'Pudge' and Apple HQ have been leaked by a former Apple employee who converted to heterosexuality. These two emails (here and here) have been repeatedly posted on Slashdot, but are quickly censored by Slashdot moderators who do not want the public to know about its agenda.Update form Subject Line Troll - it appears the O'Day is just a few letter changes away from I'm Gay and rhymes with O'Day. Is anyone surprised that Mr. Pudge is a fudge packing Mac hippie?

Simoniker, a recent addition to Slashdot has been uncovered as Mr. Goatse himself. Simoniker is a frequent poster to the Games section of Slashdot, obviously because he enjoies modded versions of Quake 3 and UT2K3 as a homosexual warrior who likes to 'overcome' his opponents with his exagerated sized love member. In addition, Simoniker is an anagram of KEN I RIM SO (Ken is probably his current boyfriend) and MEN I IRK SO (which refers to his frustratingly troubled gay relationships, probably due to his rather large asshole).

Please reply with additional information, contributions, and corrections. I will include any additional information and credit you with it in my further releases of this report.

Yeah...

[VladTheBad]

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

YOU FAIL IT HARD!

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU FAIL IT!

you are required to remove yourself from the gene pool immediately. or at least get your smelly, greasy, first-post-FAILing hide the hell out of /.

thank you.

Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
i am.

Duh

[ieatfood]

I have a theroy about his speel chek, my theroy is that it wasent worcking, and he always speelleds werds wrong and reelies on speel chek all teh time. -

Were is teh Linunx?!??

[Anonymous Coward]

Teh articel doeusnt menshun Linux.Whot do i do know?Cann i stil use it to hax0r??

That Gold Guy

[fm6]

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.

Re:hi.

[degauss]

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