4 ms·

I don't understand the units here. Surely a solar sail causes acceleration or deceleration, so its contribution would be in m/s^2, not m/s.

• stouset 10y ago
  60km/s not the acceleration. It's the total contribution to delta-V over a long period of time.
  • x1798DE 10y ago
    Why is there a total amount of change in velocity possible from solar sails? Shouldn't it depend on the mass of the thing being accelerated, amount of time under acceleration, etc?
    • Retric 10y ago
      The further from the sun you get the less acceleration you get from the sun. So, 4x the acceleration = 2x the speed because your accelerating for 1/2 the time and 1,000,000x acceleration = 1,000x the speed. Further, the input power is fixed from the sun so the absolute best you could do would be 100% sail that's a single atom thick. However, that sail would be quickly destroyed by the sun and other things. Make an ultra thin sail with a tiny little cargo Say 98% weight of the sail and 2% cargo and dropping the cargo below that does not help much. You end up getting around 60km / second which is really really fast 1km/s = fast sniper bullet. But, we are comparing it to something going 4% of light speed which is insanely fast.