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Japanese Deploy Solar Sail

Posted by timothy on Monday August 9, 2004 @05:55PM from the ix-as-an-archipeligo dept.

Chuck1318 writes "The Japanese ISAS (Institute of Space and Astronautical Science) announced the launch and deployment of the first ever large-scale solar sail. In the news release they state "Because it carries no fuel and keeps accelerating over almost unlimited distances, it is the only technology now in existence that can one day take us to the stars.""

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Re:Stellar Pong? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-08-09 18:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

I call baloney. Doesn't a solar sail work because of it's high reflectivity? Isn't that high reflectivity only on one side of the sail?

And what's so difficult about retracting the sail? The force on the sail at any given time is so miniscule it's trivial to retract them (as opposed to, say, when you have intense winds blowing on your sailboat's sail).