Posted on 08/06/2003 6:22:50 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Before the year's end, a team of civilians united by a passion for space travel will launch a spacecraft into orbit to test a new space-traveling technology.
The mission, which will use a solar sail to carry a spacecraft ever farther from Earth, is the first use of a propulsion technology that may pave the way for interstellar flights.
"Our job is just to prove this technology," project director Louis Friedman told SPACE.com. "If our craft goes just 10 kilometers on the solar sail, then it's a success." Friedman is also executive director of the Pasadena-based Planetary Society.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
"If our craft goes just 10 kilometers on the solar sail, then it's a success."Oh, I'll say. Any faster would be to invite the wrath of the speed gods. Better to float lazily through space like a downy feather or a dandilion seed, held aloft on a gentle solar breeze, barely escaping our solar system just about the time our sun goes supernova, which should be good for one, last, extra boost, the longing sigh of a dying star.
LOL! And then some!
Whatever became of the thread where a physics student proved the solar sail wouldn't do anything but spin around in place?
Whatever became of the thread where a physics student proved the solar sail wouldn't do anything but spin around in place?Like a pinwheel? Because that would be so cool. And it wouldn't have to move. It could just spin in place, allowing the rest of the solar-system, galaxy, and, eventually, the universe to move around it. It would still seem like it was moving, at least relative to everything else, which really is moving.
Yeah. Like a Crook's radiometer. Happen to have one right here. Looks like an old-fashioned lightbulb but it has the rotating vanes inside instead of a filament. Put it in sunlight and the vanes spin, spin, s p i n, wheeeeeeee . . .
Could be the rest of the world spinning around the vanes, though. Some days are like that.
"The spacecraft, called Cosmos 1, is the product of three years of cooperation between the Planetary Society, the American media company Cosmos Studios and Russia's Babakin Space Center in Moscow."
"The Planetary Society, founded by Druyan's late-husband Carl Sagan, Friedman and planetary scientist Bruce Murray, consists of about 100,000 members, many of whom helped contributed donations - ranging from the $100,000s to just $5 - to raise the $4 million necessary for Cosmos 1."
"Price told SPACE.com that NASA researchers are also busy developing their own solar sail methods, which should undergo deployment tests in 2005 and a possible flight test in 2007. Meanwhile researchers with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have conducted ground tests of their own sail material."
The most interesting part of this is how the project was funded and developed. Privately (it seems), and ahead of NASA and the ESA.
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