#solar sails

[spockvarietyhour]

Colony Ship Covenant, sails unfurled, Alien: Covenant (2017)

[grayrazor]

One of my preferred answers to the “Fermi Paradox” is that the reason we don’t see alien spaceships and Dyson spheres everywhere is because the universe is relatively young and nobody’s had the time to reach the point where they can build any of that stuff yet.

Somebody has to be first, why not us?

[honourablejester]

This thing (the Bajoran lightship/solar sailor from the DS9 episode "Explorers") was genuinely one of the most beautiful ships Star Trek ever designed. Not to mention one of the most romantic and evocative. You look at her and you immediately feel the wonder of space.

[ambientworld]

[zespaceblog]

Could Solar Sails Bring Us to the Stars ?

The idea of a Solar sail is nothing new, in 1608 Johannes Kepler discussed the idea with Galileo Galilea, and while it was a couple of hundred years later, and the birth of rocketry to become more popularised, it wasn't until 1999 that work began on one.

Early designs focused on harnessing the photons fired from the Sun, which of course makes sense, as it's a limitless source, however more recent advances in Lasers have shown, that they can deliver far more energy over much further distances.

A conventional rocket using current technology would require about 80,000 years to reach our nearest star system Alpha Centuari, and would have no capacity to slow down and enter orbit, it would be a momentary passage at that, so the Breakthrough Starshot initiative was created in 2015, with the backing of Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner, 100 million US dollars to create a craft able to cut that 80,000 years down to just 20.

Scientists working with Starshot have not only discovered materials needed to both withstand the laser beams while still being incredibly light and the thickness of a human hair.

All this is set out in a paper by the University of Pennsylvania, along with the most optimum shape of the craft.

There's still a long way to go to prove itself, but the theories are coming together, and it may be that the first interstellar craft are huge sails sped up to near the speed of light, to cross 268,142 AU (4.24 light years) *1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun)

Sources:

https://astronomy.com/news/2022/03/developing-light-sail-technology-billows-into-the-future

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/943728

https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/about

https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-solar-sailing#:~:text=When%20was%20the%20solar%20sail,Cosmos%201%20solar%20sail%20spacecraft.

[awidevastdominion]

[timbercow]

"There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear." - Jonathan Harker

[astronauticalaspirations]

Solar sails are probably going to be pretty important for colonizing the Solar System simply because they work. I love big energetic impulsive drive concepts, but most of those have serious practical problems. Solar sails are slow, but the “propellant” is free, so they’ll make a great cargo workhorse. It’s moving people we’ll need the fancy stuff for, and the simple fact is, there probably won’t be much flitting back and forth between planets till we’ve cracked fusion wide open. The maritime analogy is probably not bad: even with open-cycle gas core nuclear reactors we’re probably still talking months to the outer Solar System.