"Setting Sail Into Space, Propelled by Sunshine"
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/space/10solar.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=science[/url]
[quote=NYTimes]Peter Pan would be so happy. About a year from now, if all goes well, a box about the size of a loaf of bread will pop out of a rocket some 500 miles above the Earth. There in the vacuum it will unfurl four triangular sails as shiny as moonlight and only barely more substantial. Then it will slowly rise on a sunbeam and move across the stars.
LightSail-1, as it is dubbed, will not make it to Neverland. At best the device will sail a few hours and gain a few miles in altitude. But those hours will mark a milestone for a dream that is almost as old as the rocket age itself, and as romantic: to navigate the cosmos on winds of starlight the way sailors for thousands of years have navigated the ocean on the winds of the Earth.
“Sailing on light is the only technology that can someday take us to the stars,” said Louis Friedman, director of the Planetary Society, the worldwide organization of space enthusiasts.
...
In principle, a solar sail can do anything a regular sail can do, like tacking. Unlike other spacecraft, it can act as an antigravity machine, using solar pressure to balance the Sun’s gravity and thus hover anyplace in space.
And, of course, it does not have to carry tons of rocket fuel. As the writer and folk singer Jonathan Eberhart wrote in his song “A Solar Privateer”:
No cold LOX tanks or reactor banks, just Mylar by the mile.
No stormy blast to rattle the mast, a sober wind and true.
Just haul and tack and ball the jack like the waterlubbers do.
Those are visions for the long haul. “Think centuries or millennia, not decades,” said Dr. Dyson, who also said he approved of the Planetary Society project.
...
Dr. Friedman said the first flight, LightSail-1, would be a success if the sail could be controlled for even a small part of an orbit and it showed any sign of being accelerated by sunlight. “For the first flight, anything measurable is great,” he said. In addition there will be an outrigger camera to capture what Ms. Druyan called “the Kitty Hawk moment.”[/quote]
The article is rather long, I shortened a bit, click the link if you want the full thing. This is a p big deal if we manage to do it; we'll be able to travel much farther with much larger ships. I think the only problem is stopping, considering there is no resistance in space.
[img]http://www.greatplay.net/images/treasure%20planet.jpg[/img]
I bet this would cost a fortune anyway :(
Reading this made me think of space pirates.
[QUOTE=booster;18318989]I bet this would cost a fortune anyway :([/QUOTE]
I dont think so. the sails are made of aluminized Mylar -- which i think is relatively cheap at least compared to fuel.
[QUOTE=Waals Vander;18318963]"Setting Sail Into Space, Propelled by Sunshine"
[/QUOTE]
Trippy :lsd:
I immediatly thought of this:
[img]http://application.denofgeek.com/images/m/75spaceships/main/Geonesis_solar_sailor.jpg[/img]
It's a ship from Attack of the Clones I believe (or maybe it's the third one, I dunno).
[quote=http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/287096/top_75_spaceships_in_movies_and_tv_part_2.html]The idea of sailing between planets on the 'solar winds' has usually been relegated to the covers of SF novels, as perhaps too esoteric a notion to include in expensive sci-fi movies. But having systematically trawled through every spaceship design conceit available (and invented others on the way), Lucasfilm finally decided to give the concept a cinematic airing in Attack Of The Clones. Count Dooku's Punworcca 116-class interstellar sloop initially seems little more substantial than one of the droid fighters seen elsewhere in the prequel trilogy, until (in a rather 007-like flourish), it triples its size at the flick of a button, unfurling a gorgeous reflective sail/parachute design to help the evil count speed away from his noble pursuers.
Production designer Gavin Bocquet was unable to chat to us about the vehicle due to legal considerations with Lucasfilm, but full credit to him and his amazing team of concept artists for making space travel elegant again!
It's a no-brainer that the core section of the ship is available in Lego (though that's hardly the ideal medium to express the elegance of the design). You can find out more regarding the concept for the ship in this article with Cross Sections author and compiler Curtis Saxon at force.net.[/quote]
yeah i thought of that too
[editline]02:43PM[/editline]
NERD
Fuck yea, I love this kind of technology.
Lawl, Treasure Planet, I remember that movie.
Anyway it's really neat to see someone building a proof-of-concept. If it works as advertised, all you have to do is massively scale it up.
Treasure Planet was awesome.
[QUOTE=DoctorSalt;18319294]I immediatly thought of this:
[img]http://application.denofgeek.com/images/m/75spaceships/main/Geonesis_solar_sailor.jpg[/img]
It's a ship from Attack of the Clones I believe (or maybe it's the third one, I dunno).[/QUOTE]
I remember asking my dad what that was supposed to be when I was little and watched that movie, and he simply replied "Solar sails".
Now I'm all HOLY SHIT THEY'RE REAL.
oh it seems like a spatula just ruptured your solar panels and now you are stuck in space. fucking space shuttle crews and their lax ways of repairing.
[QUOTE=Cowie1337;18320125]oh it seems like a spatula just ruptured your solar panels and now you are stuck in space. fucking space shuttle crews and their lax ways of repairing.[/QUOTE]
This really is the sort of thing that would be used beyond Earth orbit. For it to be practical, you'd have to have a sail miles and miles across, and with the debris in LEO that's really risky. What would probably happen is disposable boosters being used to climb up to high orbit where it's clear of debris, then opening the sail and gradually working your way out of Earth's gravity and across the solar system to your destination.
[QUOTE=DarkendSky;18320105]I remember asking my dad what that was supposed to be when I was little and watched that movie, and he simply replied "Solar sails".
Now I'm all HOLY SHIT THEY'RE REAL.[/QUOTE]
pretty sure that's to shield the ship from atmospheric re-entry
[QUOTE=KaIibos;18320181]pretty sure that's to shield the ship from atmospheric re-entry[/QUOTE]
No, they're supposed to be solar sails.
Which doesn't make much sense on a ship with an FTL hyperdrive.
treasure planet was incredible
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;18320231]No, they're supposed to be solar sails.
Which doesn't make much sense on a ship with an FTL hyperdrive.[/QUOTE]
I guess it's for travel in short distance.
treasure planet, i remember playing the game on the ps2 i think
Old news.
They were gonna launch a prototype one but they also wanted to test launching from a submarine with a disarmed missile. unfortunately the prototype sunk due to a malfunction with the second stage of the missile.
I didn't like treasure planet all that much because the story was pretty much a cheesy copy-paste directly from Treasure Island, but it was interesting.
I don't see how this would be viable though as a main form of space travel.
Once you get far away from the sun the sails I assume wouldn't work anymore, and it sounds like it would be a bitch to maintain.
Also, it sounds like this will be an increadibly slow form of travel as well. Maybe a good concept for probes to have "infinite fuel" and be sent into deep space, but that's about it. And maybe having a rocket engine-based ship have this as a back-up fuel source and/or stabilizing system to allow a ship to hover in space by using the sails.
Certainly good things to have, but nothing utterally revolutionary in the way we might travel through space.
Hey, I remember when I thought of something similar. I forgot where I posted it, but I specifically recall my post asking if there was some material that could be moved by light photons/rays.
Damned people stealing my ideas :argh:.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;18320231]No, they're supposed to be solar sails.
Which doesn't make much sense on a ship with an FTL hyperdrive.[/QUOTE]
well then why do they only deploy them upon re-entry
Unless they have them out the entire trip (which as you said wouldn't make sense) I can't remember I haven't seen the film in years
It makes the ship go faster in normal space...
Wait, how will this work outside of solar systems? I mean, does it take an entire sun to power these sails, or will stars around it batter the sail around or something?
The characters from treasure planet creeped me out.
Think of the maintenance, you think you can keep large sails together without dust partials and/or meteorites from bombarding it in space?
Fuck, Treasure Planet was awesome. They just don't make them like they used to.
Quickly men! To the Amarax! Our next stop is SATURN! :science:
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