Anyone know about solar sails?

[lostcarpark]

Some of you know I'm writing a novel. It's been slow progress since the first intense month. However every so moment I have an "aha!" moment and mentally rewrite a few chapters. I had one such moment yesterday, and a whole bunch ideas came together in a rather cool way.

I've been thinking about solar sails as a means of interstellar travel for years, and would like to feature it as one of the many methods used in the book. What I'm trying to figure out is exactly how fast a sail of a given size could drag a ship of a given mass. I've found a couple of websites which hint at the equations I'd need to use, but I haven't made much headway. So if you understand the maths/physics involved, or you know somebody who does, or you read an interesting website on it, please drop me a note.

Comments

[margotmetroland.livejournal.com]

Strange as it may seem, I do know one or two sailors. Will pose the technical question for you and see what they say.

Moz
x

[robthefish.livejournal.com]

We had a lecture on this. Here are a few notes I took:
-Proposed by Tsiolkovskii & Tsander in 1924
-Lightweight sail made of Mylar - a 4sq km sail could pull a 20 tonne load
-Acceleration initially 1mm/sec, after 11 days the craft would be moving at 1km/sec
-Tacking employed to move inwards against solar wind. Sail could be laser powered to reach stars

Many solar sail designs use three axis stabilization, because the structure supports the sail in all three dimensions
The three dimensions come from the two dimensions that lie within the surface of the sail, and the third dimension that is perpendicular to the sail.
This design was suggested for a Moon Race in 1992 to celebrate Columbus 500th anniversary

Not much but hope it's a start :-)