Japan Successfully Deploys First Solar Sail In Space

An anonymous reader writes "This morning the Japanese space agency, JAXA, successfully unfurled a solar sail in space for the first time. Solar sails offer the best hope for deep space exploration because they eliminate the need to carry fuel. The Japanese spacecraft IKAROS created centripetal force by spinning, allowing it to launch the 0.0003-inch-thick sail. While deployment is a challenge in a zero-gravity environment, spacecraft — unlike airplanes — don't have to contend with drag, so with each photon that hits the sail helps the spacecraft gather speed."

Comments

warp drive is better

[fullgandoo]

Sailing might be ok from a recreational point of view, but unless we get warp drive, space exploration is a dead end. Speaking figuratively, that is.

Best we concentrate our energies in that direction.

Re:Focus

[silentcoder]

Sorry but any country whose citizens routinely describe it as "the best country in the world" while having - as per your own post - exactly ZERO grounds for comparison IS arrogant (to say the least).

It is also exactly that same uninformed and uncritical nationalism that drives imperialism. It worked for France, then for England and now for you. Ultimately, like everybody else before you the only possible outcome is you eventually getting a major knock back and then discovering you were never all THAT great after all - and like everybody else who made the mistake before you - realizing that nationalism is a stupid philosophy that has in all of human history never been usefull for anything except an excuse for atrocity.
And believe me I know, the government that committed some of the worst atrocities in the history of my nation were even CALLED the Nationalist Party. For that matter, at risk of Godwin'ing myself, nationalism was a fundamental part of Hitler's philosophy as well...

Why do you think American nationalism (or patriotism as you prefer to call it- but seriously, the words are exact synonyms) is any different ? Why do you think people in South Africa hear your presidents' (yes, I was using it in the plural possessive so my apostrophe is correct, now shut up grammar nazis) speeches and are strangely reminded of H.F. Verwoerd, B.J. Vorster and P.W. Botha (hell the last one was utterly indistinguishable from G.W. Bush - they even had the same catch-phrase-like finger-in-the-air stance !).
Because it's the exact same rhetoric. We are the chosen nation of god. The flame of liberty. The free and the fair and everybody else is godless communists and muslims and faggots.

"We are the true human beings"... how much more tribal can you get ? You don't GET to be called a civilization until you stop thinking like a tribe, and certainly not until you stop being barbarians when it comes to how you treat every other country out there.

I speak with plenty of self-critique a large part of the current generation here hasn't even learned from the fall of nationalism in my country yet and long for the "Good old days"... but they are dying breed, the majority of us have realized that in embracing people regardless of culture, and making all cultures your own you become a fuller human being with more empathy, and kindness and importantly a more fullfilling life as your experiences in this world is not limited to the narrow scope of one worldview only.

I'm sorry, but those Americans who decry the situation your country speak from having studied history, and having seen other nations and THEIR histories and want to warn you not to repeat their mistakes. Well... it doesn't look like anybody's listening.

Wouldn't it be great if, just for once, the most powerful nation around actually learned something from history, and used an approach and attitude toward the rest of the world that was devoid of such arrogance and self-superiority and perhaps didn't have to end up like the previous ones ... perhaps didn't end up hated by every other nation they had any dealings with ?

My country was never the most powerful in the world but we were and are without a doubt the most powerful on our continent... we've been everybody's love-to-hate, now we're the country everybody else in Africa wishes they lived in (hence the one with the constant flood of illegal immigrants and refugees) - and the single most important element that changed to make this happen was to replace a nationalistic government with an all-embracing one (granted, that is often more true in theory than practise but it's at least a BETTER theory).