Posted on 05/09/2005 3:56:43 AM PDT by Arkie2
"The Planetary Society (home of SETI) is planning to launch the first Solar Sail Spacecraft, Cosmos 1, later this month. The exact launch date is scheduled to be announced on Monday, May 9. This event represents one of the first privately-funded space missions with the objective of pure research. It will be launched from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea. The spacecraft consists of a body surrounded by 8 triangular sails, that will use the tiny force of reflected sunlight to (potentially) accelerate to tremendous speeds. Unfortunately, the craft is not expected to leave Earth's orbit due to degradation of the mylar materials, but should be a proof of concept for subsequent missions."
It's certainly more interesting than NASA's old flyin' bread truck.
The Mylar film on this flight is actually obsolete. NASA is testing a much thinner, tougher, lighter material. Anything to reduce the weight will increase the performance.
Although they will be passing into the Earth's shadow repeatedly on this flight eclipses won't be a problem in deep space.
If you want updated info on what NASA is doing with their solar sail research visit their home page. There's some interesting info there.
Some variation of a bread truck will still be necessary to get all this stuff in orbit! The UPS truck isn't very sexy (even if they do want to race it) but it's key to their success.
Each launch "hurts" the ozone layer more than r-12 ever did.
I think about that each summer wishin' my dash output temp was a little colder.
"a craft faster than the speed of light will be..."
Well, yes and no. I think cryogentic storage could get a living man there. We could also send wave after wave of supplies and materials with the intelligence to fly into orbit in preparation for our arrival in 10,000 years. We could also sidle up to a black hole, orbiting it during its progress through the galaxy, and find ourselves very far from our origin without aging very much because of relativistic gobbly-gook (I read something about this in a book by Robert Forward). Always have hope.
"... without aging very much"
That would apply to the travelor but not to his wife and kids - right? In order to get there and get back without missing your kids funeral we have to go really fast.
I lean toward agreeing with you. Not a waste of MY time and My money, but of somoene else's. THe reason I think it is a waste is that once they prove it works, others will copy it, just like the Wright Brothers.
While the Wright Brothers did the first powered flight, others copied and surpassed their design within months.
I think a combination fusion/fission engine would be more efficient and affective.
Using solar sail production is like running a railroad with hand cars.
Actually, there's a lot of exciting work going on in propulsion right now, from fission reactors to power ion engines, solar sails (including NASA work), propulsion that uses the solar magnetic field etc. I expect to see a lot of different ideas actually flying in the not to distant future. Ion propulsion has already been proven but with solar panels providing the necessary electrical power.
Is your contention that no one should work on this because someone might improve on it?
"That would apply to the travelor but not to his wife and kids - right? In order to get there and get back without missing your kids funeral we have to go really fast."
Exactly, you'd have to go very fast. My comments sort of meant that it would be a one way trip - no coming back. Not like Star Wars :) I figure any instersteller voyage would be one way.
You know, it would be REAL interesting to put something together and physically test this once and for all.
As Mass increases with velocity so would the mass of the propellant being pushed out of the nozzle. Kicking propellant out the nozzle of spaceship to increase speed is a hell of a lot different than pushing particles to speed in an accelerator.
Not my contention at all. If someone wants to spend their own money, let them.
It is a zero win situation. Mass will increase towards infinity as you approach the speed of light. Time also slows down. You will never reach the speed of light no matter how hard you try.
Yep, I've heard/read all the theories. I'm proposing an practical experiment to try and prove it.
I think we could build a rocket with gravity assist that could possibly reach say 650,000 miles per hour which works out close to 1/1000th the speed of light.
At the above speed or maybe even less, we should be able to detect changes in the thrust required to increase or decrease velocity as compared to the thrust required at a much lower velocity.
This vehicle could also be used in other experiments to offset the costs such as validating the anomalies discovered by the pioneer probe and others as well as the novelty of establishing a new speed record for something built by the human race. :-)
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