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The Flight of the Solar Sail
N3wsByt3 writes "After months of uncertainty, the final verdict has fallen: The Planetary Society has reveiled that it will launch its Cosmos 1 on June 21. Cosmos 1 will be the first non-governmental spaceship that makes use of solar sails as main propulsion mechanism - it is pushed along by light particles from the Sun, instead of bringing its fuel along for the ride - which makes this a unique experiment in more then one way." This was supposed to have happened already, so here's hoping things get off the ground this time.
The sail ideally will reach 0.1c exiting the solar system. After that point, the sail does ditttysquat and can be removed from the craft the sail is bearing. Combining solar sails with conventional space manuvering systems isn't all that difficult; this would allow all the steering one would like.
As the sail would approach another star, the sail would slow if both sides of the sail were mirrored. This would merely mean that were we traveling to another star, we could actually stop rather than keep on going. Doesn't that kinda sound handy at all?