Solar sail Definition and 26 Threads

It seems as though two advantages to using a solar sail turbine system instead of solar panels would be (1) the sails may not degrade as quickly as the solar panels, and (2) a sail turbine system may be lighter than a solar panel (and therefore less expensive to launch into orbit). The drawback...

Hello, In the wikipedia article about solar sails the lightness number is mentioned and the calculation is the characteristic acceleration ac divided by the Sun´s local gravity (distance: 1AU): λ = ac / 5.93 why do they use 5,93 m/s^2 for the sun´s gravity and not 274 m/s^2?

Can an on board laser be used to propel a solar sail spacecraft if the laser is pointed at the sails ? Would Newtons third law affect the laser and maybe prevent the ship from moving ? Thank you for answering my very ignorant questions. NineNinjas911

Homework Statement 4.18 With reference to Example 4.21, consider the design of a solar sail intended to reach escape velocity from the Earth 2gRe = 11.2 km/s using only the pressure due to sunlight. The sail is made of a Kapton⃝R film 0.0025 cm thick with a density 1.4 g/cm3. Take the solar...

This seems over optimistic to me but is 20% the speed of light feasible? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170201162456.htm

so the question has been previously answered as to what would happen if a fan was in the vacuum of space. but the responses I seen all ask what the fan would push on or up against. what if the fan where to push against light? solar sails are able to have a force push against them in space?

Hi all, I was hoping you could help me out with this one. Im trying to calculate the redshift or blueshift of a photon that strikes a mirror and reflects. I know E=pc, and that 2p is the momentum transfer. I also know that kinetic energy is 2p/M (of the mirror). However, this says that...

This is not actually a homework assignment, but something I decided to try in my own time. I wanted to find the radius from a star at which a solar sail would be held at equilibrium (radiation pressure = gravity), given mass per unit area and stellar luminosity at a reference radius. So I...

I don't know how long this solar sail idea has been here , the Planetary society's second solar sail failed to achieve its objective right ? I am interested in the applications of this technique. 1) Is it possible to use them to deflect large asteroids and comets away from the Earth ? 2) Is...

I've heard a lot of people talk about solar sails versus things like Ion thrusters, and it seems that both have their advantages and disadvantages. So I was wondering whether or not it's possible to use both on a single spacecraft ? That way you could get the speed of an ion thruster along with...

Hello physicists! I'm hoping you can help me with a question I'm pondering for a book. At what acceleration could a 4 km^2 solar sail move a 1 metric megaton starship? Assume we're using the solar radiation from the Sol system as our force and that the solar sail in questions is as low mass...

I was watching a show on the science channel called "Alien Encounters". Well in one of them they showed a ship that looked as if it was propelling itself by firing a laser at it's solar sail. Now I am pretty sure that from what I understand about physics, that would not be possible. Correct if...

Homework Statement I am reposting an edited version of this problem from a previous post of mine, due to it not being entirely relevant to that post, and also the question was asked after the thread had been replied to, so looks like an answered question. I also aim to give more detail here...

What if you had a laser solar sail and in front of the sail was a small thruster (either chemical or itself a laser)...thrusting constantly at a right angle to the forward direction of the craft so that the sail's trajectory would bring it back towards the first (main/stationary) laser that...

I am wondering if the properties of graphene could have implications for solar sails. I don't know much about graphene but I do know that it is only an atom thick and very very strong and theoretically can be made of infinite size. Are there any problems that graphene would face in terms of...

Could you make a solar sail that derives it's energy from the decay of a radioactive element such as plutonium, uranium, or palonium? I understand that such elements radiate in all directions but if you had a 1 kg sphere of it attached to a boon which was attached to a reflective sail (e.g...

Consider a spacecraft attached to a sheet of material, a "sail," that absorbs sunlight. Assume that the sail is positioned to face the Sun and that the combined mass of the spacecraft and the sail is m. How large does the area of the sail have to be to propel the spacecraft away from the...

if you had two spacecraft which had a solar sail as its means of Propulsion A & B, and were both identical. Spaceship A has light from the sun to push it along its way. Spaceship B has only gamma rays to push it along.(both craft have the whole of their sail surface covered with their...

Suppose you have a solar sail that was capable of perfect photoelectric conversion. So this means that photons from the Sun are striking your solar sail, and also being photoelectrically converted to electrical current. My question is - does the photoelectric conversion at all affect the...

This is kind of a weird question, so I'll just throw it out there. So I was talking to my mate about BEC a couple of weeks ago and he proposed an interesting idea. I was telling him how BEC was used to slow down light to 38mph, what he suggested was using this concept to move a solar sail. So...

I did a simulation of a solar sail in Java. It seems to be accurate; when you face the sail in one direction, it approaches the sun, in the other direction it goes outward, when it's parallel to the sun's rays it moves in an ellipse and when it's perpendicular, the ellipse is elongated. (This...

The problem is that I'm doing what seems to be perfectly reasonable algebra but I'm getting a result that makes no sense. Let's say a photon travels from the left and hits a stationary solar sail which is perpendicular to the light. There is perfect reflection and a change in momenta for both...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4110912.stm http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8291710/ http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/6/5B9C7AAC-6F11-424A-9CD3-2B12F1B9252D.html http://planetary.org/solarsail/prelaunch_report1_20050523.html

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/11/10/solar.sail.ap/index.html

The following site shows that when a sail is orientated so that it faces away from the sun, the net force is pushing outwards from the sun and is also opposing the orbit. http://solarsail.jpl.nasa.gov/introduction/how-sails-work.html It makes sense that the craft should slow down, but why...

Greetings ! Please read this short story about solar sails' physics: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zg.html Can the experts here provide their opinions, please ! I personally thought that was all simple and basic stuff long since solved by physics. I mean, a photon...