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#1 Lord Of Gifts

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Posted 29 July 2005 - 04:16 AM

I don't know how many of you heard about this, but I thought it was immensly cool. A solar sail is a spacecraft propelled by sunlight. The sail is made of a thin reflective surface about 5 microns thick. Protons reflect off this surface transfering their momentum to the sail. To get it into space they bought an ICBM from the Russians and used a sub to fire it. Sadly though, it never made it into space. Find out more here. You can also find a video of the launch here.

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One thing I know your all thinking is: Bill Nye can get an ICBM?!?! And use a sub to launch it! :o

Edited by Lord Of Gifts, 29 July 2005 - 04:17 AM.


#2 Mormacil

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Posted 29 July 2005 - 04:49 AM

We can't use solarsailes yet. The problem is the sail also refelctes the solar particles and radiation of the sun. If we would use it, the sail kills us within minutes...

#3 AdmiralGT

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Posted 29 July 2005 - 10:32 AM

The bigger problem with solar sails is that you can only travel away from the Sun which makes it incredibly difficult to actually go anywhere useful for long periods of time.

#4 F-G

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Posted 29 July 2005 - 11:25 AM

A solar sail is a spacecraft propelled by sunlight. 

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Actually,is impulsed by the particles emitted with the sunlight (the "solar wind").

#5 Slye_Fox

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Posted 29 July 2005 - 11:33 AM

There is also a simaler version of this kind of ship,
in stead of using the sun to move it, it uses an inbuilt laser kind of device

#6 Mormacil

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Posted 29 July 2005 - 09:41 PM

Ye I saw it in a documentry on tv. It uses a beam of laser to let the sail move, which moves the ship. Over long distnace it can reich an incredible speed.




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