3 ms·
Supposing you can re-orient parts of the "huge solar sail" then wouldn't it become rather like the sail of a ship or the wing of a plane, and be usable as a con
by elihu 8y ago
Supposing you can re-orient parts of the "huge solar sail" then wouldn't it become rather like the sail of a ship or the wing of a plane, and be usable as a control surface for maneuvering?
I'd imagine that in the neighborhood of L1 you would try to find some equilibrium point a little closer in to the sun so that the force of the solar wind matches gravitational pull to the sun. If you start drifting in to the sun, you expose more surface area, and if you're drifting towards the Earth, you re-orient the sail to absorb less solar wind.
- Retric 8y agoThat's the idea I was going with. You let the sun counteract most of the force from your solar sail, but that requires you to constantly to make minor adjustments because unlike a normal orbit it's not even close to stable over time. But, while not necessarily difficult it does prevent a lot of the more simple designs as you can't just toss out a bunch of reflective beach balls with very low pressure or other 'simple' means of blocking sunlight.