Tech of the Solar Clipper era

[surfsailor]

I will have to think about this for a bit and do some more reading obviously.   I'm thinkin' that with a dose of physics and some 'hand wavium' it could work in a story.  Just took delivery on new sails for my boat today so writing will be taking a back seat for a bit.

[Tara_Li]

I will have to think about this for a bit and do some more reading obviously.   I'm thinkin' that with a dose of physics and some 'hand wavium' it could work in a story.  Just took delivery on new sails for my boat today so writing will be taking a back seat for a bit.

Oh, plenty of handwavium available.  However, knowing things such as that there are two components of the solar wind gives you options in how you wave your hands.

For example - if the energy fields used to catch the particle portion of the solar wind are transparent, perhaps the ship also has physical sails, as well.  Said ship gets stranded for some reason well out into system, but the only place to get repairs is well in-system.  Unfortunately, the normal way sails are used doesn't allow for heading directly into the wind, just like with regular sails.  However, the normal reflective situation means at best, thrust tangent to the line of the wind can be achieved - however, some history buff, who's sailed boats in the water, remembers that there actually *is* some small airfoil effect possible with the solar wind, and they then use that trick to get themselves into a position and trajectory they can recover from.  It takes them much longer than the trip normally should, but I imagine all of the passengers and crew would agree that's better than dying.

The better you know the rules, the better you know how to break them and not get caught, and the better you know the loopholes you can just barely get away with.

[Grashtel]

Check these links out for a good explanation of solar sail theory.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail  and http://science.howstuffworks.com/solar-sail.htm

Nate seems to have kept it pretty simple in his concept.  The sail takes the particle part of a photon and captures its momentum/energy/whatever.  LOTS of photons of very small mass add up eventually to a respectable velocity.  The trade off of low acceleration is the relatively free nature of the photons and that a ship doesn't have to carry the propellant/reaction mass otherwise necessary.

Except that solar clippers use some variation on magnetic sails to capture the solar wind rather than the light sails that your links are talking about, in particular the mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion seems to be the closest RL technology match to solar clipper sails though there are still significant differences (eg an M2P2 sail naturally furls and spreads to match the density of the solar wind rather than needing to be adjusted).  The major technology involved in sailing a solar clipper that hasn't been explained even in as far as what it does is the gravitic keel, it seems to be a key part of the propulsion system and iss able to cause problems if over extended but other than that its not even clear what it does much less any hint of how it does it (though not saying how may well be a good idea to avoid excessive handwaving).

[Tara_Li]

Check these links out for a good explanation of solar sail theory.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail  and http://science.howstuffworks.com/solar-sail.htm

Nate seems to have kept it pretty simple in his concept.  The sail takes the particle part of a photon and captures its momentum/energy/whatever.  LOTS of photons of very small mass add up eventually to a respectable velocity.  The trade off of low acceleration is the relatively free nature of the photons and that a ship doesn't have to carry the propellant/reaction mass otherwise necessary.

Except that solar clippers use some variation on magnetic sails to capture the solar wind rather than the light sails that your links are talking about, in particular the mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion seems to be the closest RL technology match to solar clipper sails though there are still significant differences (eg an M2P2 sail naturally furls and spreads to match the density of the solar wind rather than needing to be adjusted).  The major technology involved in sailing a solar clipper that hasn't been explained even in as far as what it does is the gravitic keel, it seems to be a key part of the propulsion system and iss able to cause problems if over extended but other than that its not even clear what it does much less any hint of how it does it (though not saying how may well be a good idea to avoid excessive handwaving).

*nods* Nobody's actually flown a M2P2 sail as far as I know.  And that current "solar sail" they're flying is more concerned really with increasing atmospheric drag for de-orbiting satellites that are done with (BOO!  Recycle, don't Re-enter!  Or store it for recycling later, really).

Ikarus, though, is doing nicely with a few nano-Gs of thrust from light pressure.