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2024-11-11

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NASA's solar sail successfully spreads its wings in space (www.space.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Doesn't "solar wind" refer to the physical particles emitted from the sun? Like hydrogen, helium, etc ejected from the sun's outer layers?

My understanding is that the solar sail is propelled mostly by the photons themselves, not the atomic particles that may also be reaching it.

Of course this probably doesn't change your argument at all, since the intensity of light drops off precipitously as you fly further and further from the sun.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You're correct, the solar wind is like .5% the energy of the emitted photons and really begins to diminish after only 1.5AU, so they're even less effective in system without a laser array than I half remembered.