As far as I can work out, no go, for the following reasons:
Firstly, the Sun is emitting photons in the wrong direction - you'd get a force exerted towards the Earth, not away from it.
Secondly, the force exerted by the photons striking the sail would probably be too weak to overcome the weight (i.e. m*g) of the whole system (the sails and the payload).
Thirdly, even if the force was enough to overcome the weight, you would have a huge opposing force from air resistance.
Not to mention the fact that the sails were designed for photons striking them; I don't think they'd hold up very well against trillions of nitrogen/oxygen/etc. molecules and dust particles =)
This whole "solar sail" thing reminds me of an idea that the Air Force was playing around with, back in the '50s or '60s. They were thinking of using balloons as launch spy planes. The balloons would float up to 100,000 feet, and the pilot would release themselves from the balloon, light booster rockets to get the ramjet started, soar to 155,000 feet, and take pretty pictures of "unfriendly countries".
It's a good idea in theory, but Kelly Johnson (Skunk Works ex-head) did some number-crunching, and figured out that it would take a balloon with a one-mile diameter to carry that thing around.
As he put it, "That's one hell of a lot of hot air." To put it in the context of this whole solar sail business, "That's one hell of a huge sail."
(taken from "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich and Leo Janos)
Slashdot Mirror
Firstly, the Sun is emitting photons in the wrong direction - you'd get a force exerted towards the Earth, not away from it.
Secondly, the force exerted by the photons striking the sail would probably be too weak to overcome the weight (i.e. m*g) of the whole system (the sails and the payload).
Thirdly, even if the force was enough to overcome the weight, you would have a huge opposing force from air resistance.
Not to mention the fact that the sails were designed for photons striking them; I don't think they'd hold up very well against trillions of nitrogen/oxygen/etc. molecules and dust particles =)
It's a good idea in theory, but Kelly Johnson (Skunk Works ex-head) did some number-crunching, and figured out that it would take a balloon with a one-mile diameter to carry that thing around.
As he put it, "That's one hell of a lot of hot air." To put it in the context of this whole solar sail business, "That's one hell of a huge sail."
(taken from "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich and Leo Janos)