Solar super-sail could reach Mars in a month

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524846.500

"A LICK of paint could help a spacecraft powered by a solar sail get from Earth to Mars in just one month, seven times faster than the craft that took the rovers Spirit and Opportunity to the Red Planet."

Cool...

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Does that mean we will be going to Mars much sooner than we thought?

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How would that work? Isn't the Earth, like, revolving? Wouldn't a microwave beam, like, say, HAARP, if it was beaming microwaves out to space, wouldn't the microwaves be going in a straight line, and the Earth, as it revolved, would gradually be carrying the transmission tower to where it was no longer pointing at the sail, which would be moving away itself?

Like if you're standing on the edge of a merry-go-round shining a flashlight at the hotdog stand over across the way: the merry-go-round will carry you away from where you can point the flashlight at the hotdog stand.

Wouldn't microwaves scatter? How cohesive are they? Can you beam them across thousands and thousands of miles of atmosphere and deep space and have them still focus on a 100-meter square sail?

 

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Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation. How the hell do you think NASA beams radio signals to its spacecraft? It's no different, except it seems like they'd need a bigger transmitter.

Interesting. I love sailing... plan to do some of it myself after I'm outta school

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Even if it goes there, it would be one way. Going back would be going against the current.

 

HAARP is HF

http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/tech.html

 

It won't work for many reasons. One reason is that it can't go very fast using microwaves to power it . Don't forget that microwaves will dissapate over distance therefore lose all of there streangth within a few thousand miles!

 

Iris, cosmictraveler,

If I remember reading on the actual magazine, it actually only needs one "push"...

Yeah..... I never thought about that....

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You can "get there" in a month, but you can't get there and stop in a month. Your getting there in a month is based upon a constant acceleration to make you achieve an enormous speed, but to stop when you got to Mars you'd either have to aim it very precisely for some sort of orbital capture (which I think probably would be impossible), or just shoot past, or just crash into Mars. Or alternatively use the same amount (or more) of fuel that you would have used getting up to that speed in the first place.

 

where is trilobyte when you need him to coment on somthing as crazy as that statment.

 

Physics is crazy?

 

Silas, the craft, upon arrival, will join into the orbit of the planet, alot like a freeway entrance, it will join the "mainstream".

This project is most defintely possible, and I think it is a great idea to use different means of technology.

Iras, you are forgetting that they are planning for the microwaves to be processed at 60 megawatts !..... that is why it seems like the idea cannot work, but it would.

Having 60 megawatts worth of microwaves pointed in one direction towards the sail would see the eventuation of the particles pushing into each other, think about it.
When the particles are released from the sail by the microwaves, the outbound particles will be interacting with the incoming microwave particles creating an "micro-atmosphere" between the sail and the incoming microwaves.

These are the sort of methods we should be achieving space exploration with.

These sort of private projects are exactly what the star gazign community are looking for.

 

('Going back would be going against the current.')

The solar "wind" is a stream of high energy particles that are constantly being radiated away from the sun. If you use the "normal" method of solar wind propulsion ("light pressure"), instead of the use of radiation to evaporate a propellant, then you will have to follow the outward current of radiation from the sun, but since the evaporation of a paint (etc) is seven times the force created by light pressure alone you can go against the "current" of the solar wind, but with 5/7 of the force (6 units minus one unit going in the opposite direction instead of 6 plus 1 (=7) when moving away from the sun). If you make the solar sail transparent to, at least most of, the radiation then the paint will be heated by a radiation source at any angle but will only induce a force on the spacecraft in the direction you point it (so you could travel towards Venus or Mercury using the sun).

Also if you don't intend to land on mars you could just loop around it and head back to earth or any other direction.

 

Silas, they do not require the entire journey with constant powering to reach mars in less time than normal, only the start.

 

Silas, Have a 2 sailed vehicle facing in opposite directions when its time to stop you open up the one oposite to the direction of travel and slow the vehicle down... just an idea.

 

yeah, you can just drop off some cargo (rovers or something) and loop back without losing much speed. Then flip your sail over and have it power you back at a really high speed. Perhaps this looping method will, some day, be how we get out of this solar system.