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.

Comments

Re:This seems silly

[rsynnott]

Actually, that's one of the nice things about it. Assuming the other star has the same solar wind as the original (which it probably won't) your spacecraft may actually come to a complete halt at the other star, which is what you want. A classic problem with interstellar travel is that not only do you need to carry fuel to accellerate you towards the objective, but to slow you once you get there as well.