Questions tagged [solar-sails]
24 questions
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How does the solar sailing concept work?
Wikipedia describes solar sailing as
a form of spacecraft propulsion using a combination of light and high speed ejected gasses from a star to push large ultra-thin mirrors to high speeds.
I understand the part where ejected gasses bump into the…
user17615
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Deflection Effects on a Spinning Solar Sail
Suppose I have a solar-sail-powered starship flying directly away from a star. The sail is flat and perpendicular to the direction of travel. Now, in order to make the trajectory more stable (we think), we make the ship spin around its center of…
Mau
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What is the maximum possible temperature of a 1mx1mx1m cube that is the focal point of an array of mirror reflected, concentrated beams of sunlight?
If we assume an array of 1m x 1m mirrors reflecting sunlight in an Alabama field to a common point, what would be the maximum possible temperature that could be reached?
How many mirrors in this array could be added that would still have an…
Jim McMillan
- 143
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Solar Sailing with Optical Amplification
The solar sail has been proposed as a means of carrying payloads into deep space without traditional thrusters. Most approaches seem to require a thin reflective chute that unfurls to a shape oriented about the sun.
Here it’s mentioned that…
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Redshift of a reflected photon from a solar sail
Can someone help me understand my mistake here?
I'm thinking of a photon travelling with momentum $p=h/\lambda$ which reflects off a solar sail of mass $m$ travelling with momentum $p_0$ in the same direction. Before the reflection, the total…
lauren96
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If photons can be used to accelerate solar sails, why can't they be ejected from a spacecraft and be used as an "engine?"
I'm not really sure why or how, but photons apparently have momentum. This goes against my very limited sense of physics, as they have no mass at all. How is this possible?
At any rate, I came to wonder--if photons have momentum and can propel solar…
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Would solar sail get warm?
Would solar sail get warm?
If yes, then approximately how fast could they be warming up?
That may be a weird question, but that's for a short story I'm considering to write, and it's actually very important for the plot :) .
Łukasz Zaroda
- 285
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Question about transfer of momentum in photons
Imagine a photon hits an object, then bounces off and travels in the other direction, all while retaining it’s wavelength.
If the object is slightly accelerated in the direction of the incident photon’s travel, then it seems like conservation of…
Joey Peluka
- 107
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Could light from the Sun be used to power the Breakthrough Starshot microships?
The Breakthrough Starshot initiative aims to accelerate a swarm of 16m$^2$-area solar sails to 15% of $c$ using Earth-based lasers in the order of 100GW power in 10 minute bursts. Considering loses from various medium densities and temperatures of…
fenollp
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Circular Reflection
How efficiently can light be turned into angular momentum?
Light can be contained for long paths via total internal reflection with some steady decline in intensity due to absorptivity of the medium. This is usually compensated for in…
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Could focused sunlight ignite a pellet of lithium deuteride?
This is a basic question, but it something I have been wondering ever since I learned about inertially confined fusion. In the ICF reactor configurations I am aware of, the drivers that are used to compress and heat the pellet are electrically…
user11377
- 213
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Solar sail and Ship sail difference in function
Solar sails seem to operate more like parachutes than proper sails. Any mariner knows that following the wind is a fairly slow means of movement compared to moving perpendicular to the wind'speed direction. Resistance from the sea itself is…
Bodhi
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Solar sail, estimate force
I'm trying to get an estimative for how much force is applied on a solar sail by solar radiation.
So the first question is elastic or inelastic collision? Elastic colision provides a change in momentum of 2p, while an inelastic colision would have a…
0 kelvin
- 220
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How can I calculate the relationship between power and acceleration for a beam driven photon sail?
I am writing a novel, and although I have a background in physics, I am unsure of the exact equations to use.
Specifically:
For a photon-sail ship, how powerful would a driving laser need to be in order for the ship to reach an acceleration of…
iRoygbiv
- 263
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Momentum exerted on an external object by a Photon
I am trying to calculate momentum transferred by a Photon for Solar Sails speed (not exactly a photon because of wave-particle duality but i will consider it a Photon for this Question), So I had the following results: 2.998×10^-47 kilogram meters…
user348071