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You don't just need station keeping. Every launch takes energy away from the orbit of the launch platform. Consecutive launches basically deorbit the launch pla
by Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
You don't just need station keeping. Every launch takes energy away from the orbit of the launch platform. Consecutive launches basically deorbit the launch platform. To maintain the orbit, the solar sails must generate an equal amount of orbital energy as the launch platform imparts upon vehicles launched. In other words, you could just launch stuff with its own solar sail to the same effect.
This happens on the moon, too, but the moon is basically a limitless supply of orbital energy.
- Retric 9y agoI think you misunderstood what I meant by station keeping. The sail is used to return the platform to it's orbit after launch. You probably want something else for normal station keeping. Anyway, I was wrong about the square root thing. It's 1:1. A 1km2 sail represents 7m/s/s for 1 kg of stuff. Normally the sail eats into that and you quickly get far from the sun, but that's not the case here. Fire a 100kg object at 20,000 m/s and a 10km/10km sail can return the station to orbit in around 50 minutes. Granted if you are in earth orbit it's a little more complex. But you probably want to be in a fairly high orbit anyway to maximize delta v.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]