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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.
"reveiled:" is that like the opposite of "unveiled?" So, are you saying that they have tried to cover up the news? And if so, then how are we finding out? Or is it from the French "reveil:" the awakening. Did they wake up to the news? Is that why they tried to cover it up?
So confused.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
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?
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.
Me (Blog)
You could use a solar sail to go from Earth to Mercury if you wanted.
Angle it so that thrust is opposite the orbital motion of the earth. You slow down relative to the sun. You fall to a lower orbit. Nifty, huh?
If you're really in a hurry to slow down you detach a reflector, let it fly in front of you, and have a planet-based launching laser fire at the reflector, bounce back to you and slow you down.
whoops i foobard the link, here it is again
w ind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing#Running_Down
A solar sail could, theoretically, pass the Voyagers in less than a week. That's the advantage of having continuous thrust along the way, rather than one impulse at the start and then coasting as the Voyagers did.
The Voyagers are now at a distance of about 13 light-hours from the sun. A thin and lightweight solar sail would quickly accelerate to almost the speed of light, so it's possible to cover that distance in a few days at most.