11-10-2015, 11:58 AM
I was just undertaking my weekly skim of space.com and stumbled across this article.
http://www.space.com/31063-electric-sail...ation.html
Electric sails! Similar to the well-known solar sail idea in that it uses matter ejected from a star. Except the electric sail uses that funky perpendicular force thing with electrons and whatnot to generate thrust. Article says 20 to 30 AU a year; that's pretty dang fast by today's standards.
Currently, discussion is occurring on whether or not this is even feasible. Some people believe it could be implemented in as early as ten years.
If it is possible, and really could be in use within even a few decades, it would certainly be something of note at least in the early OA timeline wouldn't it? After all, we're still using chemical rockets. I'm not too familiar with the material, but I'm guessing it would become redundant with the introduction of amat drives, so not much change would be needed.
In any case, it at least deserves an article.
http://www.space.com/31063-electric-sail...ation.html
Electric sails! Similar to the well-known solar sail idea in that it uses matter ejected from a star. Except the electric sail uses that funky perpendicular force thing with electrons and whatnot to generate thrust. Article says 20 to 30 AU a year; that's pretty dang fast by today's standards.
Currently, discussion is occurring on whether or not this is even feasible. Some people believe it could be implemented in as early as ten years.
If it is possible, and really could be in use within even a few decades, it would certainly be something of note at least in the early OA timeline wouldn't it? After all, we're still using chemical rockets. I'm not too familiar with the material, but I'm guessing it would become redundant with the introduction of amat drives, so not much change would be needed.
In any case, it at least deserves an article.