It all starts with a curiosity; Ships with light sailboats

in Popular STEM4 days ago

It all starts with a curiosity; Ships with light sailboats




Light sailboats or solar sailboats are being developed. I prefer the term light sailboat because in reality what pushes is light, whether from the sun or from a laser. The interesting thing about pushing a solar sail with a laser is that you get enormous thrust and it can reach tremendous speeds. It is studied precisely to send ships to the nearest star next to Centauri.


The problem is that the ability to point a solar sail decreases with distance and we do not have as much capacity to point that far away, this capacity is around a million kilometers or a million and a half kilometers from the Earth.


The problem is that the Earth's atmosphere distorts the laser, so it is difficult to aim from the Earth. If you place the laser on the moon, things change and I suppose that then the distance at which you can aim can be much greater.


There is an old project, an old idea of ​​putting panels in space to capture almost permanent light and transmitting that energy with the solar panels to the ship or to the earth, it is an old idea.




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