this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
255 points (99.6% liked)

Technology

60071 readers
3571 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but it would be less efficient than a sail, and since the incoming radiation would impart inertia on the solar panels, you would still be limited on where you could steer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Sail absorbs power while also acting as a sail, and you can use the lasers to steer?

It would also be like steering a boat more or less no?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

The solar sail reflects light instead of absorbing it so you get to double dip on photon momentum.

And sure, you can steer with the laser I suppose, but with that kind of super weak deltaV, you’re not going to be exactly doing donuts in the solar system.

Even the massive solar sail only imparts a super small amount of force. It’s only useful because it does so for free over a long period of time with no air resistance.

You’d be better off using a conventional thruster to do whatever steering you needed to do before letting the sail take over. It’s not like you need to steer around any obstacles.