Solar Sailing

[Andrew Boulton]

"ON JUNE 21, 2005, THE WORLD'S FIRST SOLAR SAIL SPACECRAFT WILL BE LAUNCHED BY OUR PLANETARY SOCIETY LED TEAM"

http://www.planetary.org/solarsail/

 

[Golan2072]

I wish them good luck and success.

However, has any of you ever used a solar sail in their Traveller universe? Not too attractive as TL9+ has Reactionless drives (or reaction Fusion drives as IMTU) that make interplanetary transit painless and the Jump Drive which is FTL, but great for generations ships and their likes.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

They thought they lost the thing, and now they think they can find it again. It is apparently in a low orbit - they just have to pin it down to give it new instructions.

 

[shield]

Now they are not sure if they have found it, damn those cheap second hand rockets

As for traveller, White dwarf had an article on STL ships that included light sail. It even had a high guard design and an adventure seed. Basically it had them used as a very low cost bulk carrier (for stuff that did not have to be there any time soon)

Cheers
Richard

 

[Pickles]

Yup, still got that article. The theory was, that you could use them for regular runs, like mineral shipments. Once you got over the initial wait, you'd be getting regular shipments as fast as you sent out the original ships. Not a good way of getting specific items, though ...

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Originally posted by RichardP:
(for stuff that did not have to be there any time soon)

Yeah, like anytime this century!

 

[Andrew Boulton]

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/ap_solarsail_fail_050622.html

-ing Commie ICBMs :-(

 

[Fritz_Brown]

(Probably the sub guys drinking some of the fuel.

)

 

[Rossoneill]

Just saw an article that said it is in low orbit ,they just need to find it so that they can give it orders