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Solar and Microwave Passive Propulsion

Sail propulsion using reflected photon pressure

Solar sail
Image from Steve Bowers

Microwave and optical laser and solar sails have the attractiveness of providing a virtually engineless and fueless craft; photons simply provide the momentum necessary to send the spacecraft to its proper destination.

But as with every form of space ship propulsion these, too, have their share of disadvantages: pointing accuracy of laser-driven probes, dependence on ground infrastructure for laser or maser launched and propelled ships, low intensity of solar light outside the solar system for solar sails, ultra-low payload mass (which makes them perfect for nanoprobes but very inefficient at larger scales), vulnerability of the huge sails (hundreds of square kilometers) to accumulative micrometeoroid damage, etc.

 
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    Solar surfing, also known as sun diving or sun skipping, is a form of vec entertainment in which specially designed ships are placed in a orbit such that they will fly through the outer edges of a star and even skip across its surface. Highly dangerous sport requiring high speeds and extremely accurate trajectories. May also refer to riding solar flares and other solar eruptions.
 
Appears in Topics
Drytech/HylotechInterplanetary TransportInterstellar Transport
Middle Tech / Midtech
 
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 31 December 2001.

 
Additional Information
UC Santa Barbara Laser Propulsion Calculator
 
 
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