Solar Sail Simulations

[SpazzyMcGee1337]

What if we provided some light of our own? A large laser could provide a lot more kick than the Sun. Or we could just use some solar mirrors to direct additional sunlight at the spaceship's sail. We could produce many times the acceleration we would get using just the Sun.

[America100000able]

You should have had done a 1,000x1,000 meter sail at the closest distance you could have brought it to the sun, and see what that would have done.

[Omega2064]

Did the calculations take into account that the sail should continue to gain velocity as it heads outwards from the sun?

[sweetsongman1]

36,000 years hmm? yeah i think i can wait that long...boy i cant wait to see my greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat­greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat­greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat­greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat­greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat­greatgreatgreatgreat grandchildren :D

[yarahahrwe]

now do antimatter catalyzed orion rockets :p

[sunsunsunm00n]

日本の技術試験衛星 イカロスが此処まで出来たら凄いのにね

[docatomics]

...if only we could build strong enough to harness mass coronal ejection , and the knowledge to predict them, then we could carry a large supply of navigation fuel & payload. Perhaps some day we will harness more of the solar emissions including the plasma CME with a electromagnetic sail , not unlike that earth generates? This would also provide a fuel catchment for manoeuvring, might go between the stars, if jumping on nova wake, magnistar or even gamma ray burst power. IF ONLY there was will

[sweetsongman1]

@docatomics gamma ray burst riding huh? think about that. gamma ray bursts are more powerful then you can imagine. ok il put it into perpective. imagine the death star's laser and multiply that by 30,000,000 and you got the power of an average gamma ray burst. that would completely pwn the sail like a red hot knife through butter

[SpankBankLLC]

Yea it sounds like crap tech until you tell the correct way to use it. Sling shot the craft off venus as many times until you are going as fast as you want. Simply role off the sun and venus while collecting speed each pass.

[x2yzh9]

I prefer ion engines/Nuclear thrusters.

[pemsdoll]

I actually really like the song.. What's it called? By the way, I also enjoy the rest of the video.

[SailorBarsoom]

OK, so put a 5 GW solar power satellite in orbit about the Sun. It uses that to power lasers, which push the sail. Also, you could have powersat/laser combos about each planet (you'd need large but low-mass mirrors to bring the solar intensity up once you're much past Mars). Then when the ship gets close to Saturn, the powersat/laser combo there slows it sown, until it's time to send it on its way to Neptune or something.

Five gigawatts is a lot of lasers.

[personzorz]

What program did yo use?

[kevinkeay0382]

makes sense because for now the cheapest way to get there is the best way.

[HAL11000]

I prefer Mag-beam.

[theinsane102]

I perfer Mag Sail.

[HAL11000]

Both have issues.

E.g. With Mag Sail (M2P2), how large and heavy the magnetic coil would have to be and whether the momentum from the solar wind can be transferred to the spacecraft are under dispute.

MagBeam needs an energy dense power-source, with a massive battery bank being proposed for an Earth-Mars facility massing 3,000 tons.

Of course, a fission reactor could reduce the weight of the station.

They may have flaws, but the two have the potential to revolutionize space travel.

[theinsane102]

Yes I agree, but with a powerfull enough power source we can achieve anything. :)

[subach]

I've never been a fan of solar sails, esp. not for traveling in the solar system, since if you're traveling to say Saturn you've got no way to shed the extra velocity in order to actually enter orbit, and the Suns too weak out there anyway. Could be useful in going to Venus or Mercury though, but not Mars. No way to justify doing a solar flyby on a trip to mars.

[gcfilmclub]

No, in the small spacecraft, a laser can be mounted. Making it go anywhere you just aim the laser at different angles etc.

[subach]

Sure you could mount a laser, but if you're going to do that you might as well replace the sail with thin film PV and a couple ion propulsion engines. We still have the same problem on outer planet trips though, the sunlight is too weak to give you enough power to remove your extra velocity, you'll just shoot by the planet.

[lcclk]

? prefer.. what? Is here a limit how many passes to how many times the craft can do around the sun to gather velocity?

[subach]

Yes, the escape velocity of the Sun is around 30km/s if I remember correctly. Once you pass that you'll be flung outside of the solar system unless you use energy to "slow down".

[Sciagateist]

I read about "fast solar sailing" on wikipedia and they use a slightly different approach to the sun and that might be better.

[BrunoTheQuestionable]

Thanks for the reference. It looks like that trajectory would give a higher velocity approaching the Sun, which should be carried through to the final velocity. I think this calls for another simulation :)

[BrunoTheQuestionable]

I tried a simulation with a 200x200 sail, going out to about 2 AU before the Sun flyby, but the final velocity wasn't noticably better than a direct flyby :(

[Arkanoid1212]

@Sciagateist use a propulsion beam

[smoothvirus]

Interesting stuff. I wonder how much of a delta vee boost you'll get by doing a Jupiter slingshot.

[BrunoTheQuestionable]

Voyager 2 approached Jupiter at about 10km/s and left at 22km/s. I just tried a simulation of a solar sail Jupiter flyby but it shot straight past unaffected. To get a useful gravity assist, its necessary to spend a reasonable amount of time in the planets gravity well. At the velocity that we've got, this doesn't happen.

[BADAWYY]

Yes, but what if we make a solar sail with one kilometer square area and unpack it only near the Sun? What if after the initial gain in velocity we fire up some engines to add to the speed? What if once got out of the heliosphere that surrounds our solar sitem we encounter some parasite galactic currents that will either accelerate us further or stop us?

[BrunoTheQuestionable]

To approach the Sun it is necessary to reduce the spacecraft's orbital velocity and let the Sun's gravity pull it in - the sail can be used to do this. I just did a simulation of a 1km square sail, and kept it edge-on to the Sun for 19 hours out of 20 while approaching, to make it act like a smaller sail.

[BrunoTheQuestionable]

With a minimum distance of 10 solar radii, the velocity at 6 months was 821km/s. The maximum acceleration was 2.7g !

I don't think carrying a rocket engine would be of any advantage, because the extra mass would reduce the velocity gained by the sail - I think I'll try a simulation of this to prove it.

After leaving the solar system, it would probably be best to travel "sideways" to minimize any drag - I think the drag would be quite small though.

[BrunoTheQuestionable]

A simulation with an additional ion engine, fired at closest approach gave slower final velocity.

[sheepwshotguns]

no way!?

not bad for a sail boat.

[BrunoTheQuestionable]

Yeah, I'm amazed how big the radiation pressure is.