Watch NASA unfurl basketball-court-sized solar sail for deep space propulsion (video)

[Admin]

NASA and Redwire Space successfully deployed a massive solar sail in a test, potentially paving the way for this revolutionary propulsion technology to be used for deep space transportation.

Watch NASA unfurl basketball-court-sized solar sail for deep space propulsion (video) : Read more

 

[Cisventure Astronot]

I can't wait for a spacecraft to pull an Opportunity, and operate long after its initial mission. Let's just hope it doesn't also pull an OSIRIS-APEX, and rename itself every time it gets a new objective.

 

[Atlan0001]

Probably not, but I wonder if the UFO disks we keep seeing pictures of house titanic (for the size of the disks) unfolding and folding cosmic energy sails to power drives of constant acceleration/decelerations in the space of the universe? Even balloon-shaped surface sails ("surround-sound" and then superconduct energy, so to speak) if not strictly sun facing energy sails? Whatever?

 

[iMaxPlanck]

Increasing speed of space travel, okay, but "reach another star in a reasonable amount of time"? Like hundreds or thousands of years reasonable?

 

[Atlan0001]

Increasing speed of space travel, okay, but "reach another star in a reasonable amount of time"? Like hundreds or thousands of years reasonable?

Unless we discover both inertial drag and an equal but opposite inertialessness do exist at once in the SPACE FRONTIERS, like the picture of accelerating universe expansionism possibly being little more than a picture of inertialessness in the universes existing. Whatever. Constant powered flight in space, a constant of acceleration, even if at only 1-Earth-g of acceleration, swiftly in gradually shrinking, contracting, the locally relative bubble space of the universe turns out to be something incredibly fast in deed in building to that shrinkage, that contraction..

 

[billslugg]

...cosmic energy sails to power drives of constant acceleration/decelerations in the space of the universe?

There is not a whole lot of power in cosmic ray flux. In outer space, your average, common, powerful cosmic ray is the 1 billion volt variety of which about 3000 will hit any particlular square meter per second. Each one has an energy of 1.6e-10 joule. Total power 5e-7 watt. An array of 1 square km would provide a power of one half of a watt. We're going to need a bigger boat.

 

[Classical Motion]

I hate to be so contrary but I don't think a solar sail will work. Yes they can put one up there and measure some momentum and gain some acceleration. But the power source for this device decreases at an inverse square rate with distance. Not practical for any outward travel. Imagine the size of the sail needed at Neptune to have the same momentum we would get here.

Light is not a free ride. It fades too quickly.

I was under the impression that cosmic rays were more or less omni-directional. Or at least what net direction it had would be sparse. Much less than the stated number. And from what I've heard what directional flux there is temporary. The net cosmic flux could be like the wind. One would need to detect the cosmic flow currents for navigation.

The solar wind might work if we could harvest it's momentum. The depictions of it show a net stream of it that might be tacked. This flux also has some dispersion to it, but unlike light, this flux is accelerating. The flux is sparse at Neptune but has much higher velocity. With an efficient harvesting method or converter or collector...this would help counter the inverse square loss for a more practical form of solar travel.

But it's in the future. For future tech.

Understanding why the solar wind accelerates for so long might really help space travel. It's so anti-gravity.

 

[billslugg]

Yes, solar sails are possible but there are lots of problems. In order to get a good enough push from the Sun, one must start very close to it.
And, yes, galacitc cosmic rays are omnidirectional, they would need to be absorbed, converted into another form of energy, aimed out the back.
Solar cosmic rays come from one direction, but why use them when you have sunlight?

 

[Atlan0001]

Yes, solar sails are possible but there are lots of problems. In order to get a good enough push from the Sun, one must start very close to it.
And, yes, galacitc cosmic rays are omnidirectional, they would need to be absorbed, converted into another form of energy, aimed out the back.
Solar cosmic rays come from one direction, but why use them when you have sunlight?

Not "why use them" but close up the sun rays would overpower the other rays until a horizon point of switching over between interplanetary and interstellar space was reached.

 

[billslugg]

Well, first off, solar cosmic rays produce a power output about 10^-10 that of sunlight, and the intensity falls off by the inverse square just like sunlight does.
However, at some point far from the Sun, sunlight power would fall below that of interstellar cosmic rays. I don't know how far that might be.