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Solar Sails And Space Propulsion

Posted by Zonk on 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.

1 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Rails? Hmmm, interesting. by lheal · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    What about using a giant rail-gun to launch a space vehicle from the moon?

    Once spaceborn, the vehicle could deploy its deep-space propulsion, such as solar sails or ion drive.

    --
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