[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]

[stainlessbanner]

[Doctor Stochastic]

Sailing, Sailing, over the unbounded Main.

[Renegade]

Nothing new. I remember this mode of propulsion in a Disney show from the 50's (Tomorrowland segment ) where space ships used this idea to travel to Mars .. I think I was 9 (1956)??

[freedomcrusader]

The demonstration of a revolutionary way to travel to the planets and maybe even to the stars

Wouldn't you lose power once you got too far from the sun? Although I suppose in the near-total vacuum of space, there's not much friction slowing you down constantly.

Still, there's always the issue of making turns.

[Lee Heggy]

I would think that well before reaching the speed of 100 kilometers a second the dust and particles in open space would tear such sails to pieces. What sort of deflection system is there?

[ElkGroveDan]

Why does this moonbeam powered device make me think of old Governor Jerry Brown?

[RightWhale]

Is a mission for lightsails even possible? Is business interested? Science will try anything of course. Star travel seems out of the question for lightsails.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

And if you're a member, they'll send your name with the spacecraft.

[jennyp]

Risk, though, is probably the main reason for NASA’s noninvolvement. Battered by a bruising report about the Columbia disaster as well as by the loss of two Mars-bound spacecraft in 1999, the agency "can’t spend taxpayer money with the level of risk" that the Cosmos 1 team is taking, notes Neil Murphy, who currently coordinates the solar-sail work at JPL. Plenty of pitfalls abound. "Concern lies with what happens to an ultrathin material over tens of meters," Friedman says, noting that engineers have no good way on the earth to test the behavior of the material in zero gravity. "You can imagine all sorts of problems—take Saran Wrap and wave it around," he offers. Ripping, fluttering and sagging would all undermine the sail’s ability to reflect photons.

Huh? What risk? Risk to whom? It would be an unmanned satellite!

[Pilsner]

For more information about light sails read The Mote in God's Eye by larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

[KevinDavis]

As a member of the planetary society, I find this concept interesting, however in order to send humans say to Alpha Centauri(sp), we are talking at least a 100 year voyage there.

Space Ping! This is the space ping list! Let me know if you want on or off this list!

[beavus]

Not the way to go. It's not nearly as glamourous as a steel phallus with a stream of fire blasting out its butt. Space travel needs to be cool. It needs to conform with the movies I grew up with.

[Consort]

Tin foil hat reaches planetary proportions.

[irv]

NASA is working on a more advanced solar-sail craft, probably to be configured as four square panels, but it won’t be ready for at least another few years

Here's the real reason NASA is sitting this one out, and sitting most other innovations and successes out these days. It's the "We don't have to produce results. We just have to look important" syndrome.

[aruanan]

Well, it'll be interesting to see whether Thomas Gold is right yet again in the matter of solar sails.