Sailing through space

Home News Tribune ^ | 01/01/07

[KevinDavis]

[tet68]

As always, the problem is how do you stop?

[verum ago]

As always, the problem is how do you stop?

easy. you just fail to convert imperial units into metric and slam into Mars at 10,000 m/s. works every time.

[KevinDavis]

Probaly use the gravitational pull of the planet....

[cripplecreek]

I like Robert Forward's carbon nanotube tether method for climbing in and out of gravity wells.

[RightWhale]

Heard Mrs Carl Sagan yesterday going on about this. They are getting a big solar sail ready for launch, which if it deploys properly ought to be highly visible. This is a fine idea for getting to the outer planets, or at least sailing right past the outer planets at high speed. The scheme might do for getting to the next star and even stopping when they get there.

[FormerACLUmember]

Hoist the top sail, laddies!

[NCC-1701]

"...
As always, the problem is how do you stop?..."

Fold the sail and use normal retros to brake into planetary orbit. Always works when done right.

[RightWhale]

Mrs. Sagan said you'll be going 1/10 the speed of light. Your retrorockets will serve as a warning flare to those in the vicinity of your proposed landing area.

[Young Werther]

I read this short story in the Boy Scout magazine.

"The Wind from the Sun" by Arthur C. Clarke, a short story (in an anthology of the same name) describing a solar sail craft Earth-Moon race.

It was originally published under the name "Sunjammer" but when Clarke learned of the short story of the same name by Poul Anderson, he quickly changed it.

You can probably find the anthology at Amazon.

Today the foot ball games didn't impress me so I watched Turner Classic Movies SciFi films marathon. Heinlein's "Destination Moon" was outstanding. A real space spectacular.

[SunkenCiv]

you'll be going 1/10 the speed of light. Your retrorockets will serve as a warning flare to those in the vicinity of your proposed landing area.

s/b "your impact crater". :')

[Calvin Locke]

I seem to remember that the book Planet of the Apes, had a brief passage about a sail on a spacecraft, while setting up the real story.

[EarthBound]

Mrs. Sagan said you'll be going 1/10 the speed of light. Your retrorockets will serve as a warning flare to those in the vicinity of your proposed landing area.

That would depend on when you start firing your retros, and how low you fire them, and if you have enough fuel. General question: couldn't they pull in the sail, or simply rotate the craft (sail and all) 180%, and allow the stellar wind from the destination system to do most of the decelleration as they enter the heliosphere?

[RightWhale]

It might be mentioned that space travel might not be your forte.

[EarthBound]

Wowsers, I find that extremely upsetting as I've been enthused with it since my young childhood. After reading up on it, it would simply be a issue with matching the vector of solar wind coming from the destination system. Time would, of course, be a factor, but it could reasonably be done with proper systems in place.

[EarthBound]

It might also be mentioned that your post didn't answer my question at all, so really provided nothing to the discussion.

[RightWhale]

The question cannot be answered based on the laws of physics as known in this universe.

[jmcenanly]

As always, the problem is how do you stop?

Angle the sail so that the thrust from the Sun is opposite the direction of travel. You would have to do a planetary swing by to accomplish this.

[EarthBound]

False. We know a good deal about how physics works. We need only apply it. If we could utilize a fast solar sailing technique to get there (wikipedia article), we can use an opposite approach to slow down for destination star systems we wish to study / explore.