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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Quirks and Quarks by astrosmash · 2005-06-18 07:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

Check out this week's Quirks and Quarks podcast, which covers the same topic. They interview the Planitary Society project manager about the upcoming solar sail launch.

While I'm at it, they've also got a segment on quantum cryptography this week which is kind of interesting.

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ENDUT! HOCH HECH!