Solar Sails And Space Propulsion

Posted by Zonk on Saturday June 18, 2005 @06:37AM from the to-infinity dept.

Doomie writes "The Economist has an interesting article about solar sails. It talks about the Russian ICBM that will launch Cosmos 1 (mentioned previously on /.) 'The first craft powered by solar-sail technology to orbit the Earth', and the link between this technology and interplanetary travel. Cosmos 1 will orbit Earth starting on June 21st and could, in theory, reach '200,000kph after three years of acceleration' due to the fact that 'particles of light, or photons, that strike a surface give it a tiny push'. The official homepage of the project has more details." Update: 06/18 18:57 GMT by Z : While space trains would be cool, that wasn't the intent of the story. Changed rails to sails.

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WFT? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-06-18 06:46 · Score: 1, Insightful

Whoever posted the link to the Article failed to comprehend the fact that I have to pay and register to view it - so please why don't you also publish your username and password so others can also see it.

Not all of us /.ers are rich enough to afford to pay for the thousands of rip-off subscriptions.