Star Trek Solar Sails

Solar Sails

GROUP: Members

POSTS: 1052

Report this Nov. 10 2009, 3:52 am

They've come up in a few discussions recently, so I thought this might be of some interest:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news....failure

Check it out.

dryson

GROUP: Members

POSTS: 538

Report this Nov. 10 2009, 5:34 pm

The only problem would be is that the solar sail would not be able to be used outside of the solar system once the vehicle reached the perimete of the sun's influence. The soalr sail would most likely however be able to propell the ship into the depth's of space based on the momentum achieved while still in the solar system.

4_of_20

GROUP: Members

POSTS: 1052

Report this Nov. 10 2009, 6:44 pm

Yeah, it's pretty much for orbital satellites at the moment. Future proposals might be planetary missions within sol?

For interstellar purposes you'd need a laser photon sail, or the high-energy particle sail in lanceromega's "CERN test hyperdrive" thread. Still, this simple probe excites me!