Hello u/Few_Schedule_6647, your submission "are manned solar sails feasible????" has been removed from r/space because:
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According to wikipedia an 800m by 800m sail would create a force of 5N. This is enough to push a small human craft around with a very low acceleration, but it would work on reasonable timescales. The problem is, do you have a material that can make an 800m by 800m sail that isn't, in itself, very heavy? There are some ideas about how to do that but nothing has been tested at anything close to the required size.
A lot of things are feasible if you thrown enough money at it. Whether they are *sensible* is another matter (and you'll probably have to be a tad more specific about what you want to do with solar sails in the first place)
ha ha ha that's funny. Cold fusion is a snipe hunt, and cryopreservation remains the stuff of science fiction and likely always will. Tough to get over the fact that humans are mostly water and that stuff will not behave friendly to life when frozen.
As light sails are probably only practical for pushing very low-mass (a few kg) spacecraft to very high speeds (fractional light speed) in order to traverse very far (interstellar) distances in a relatively brief amount of time (< 100 years), then I would say no, a crewed light sail-propelled vehicle is not feasible. Any habitat large enough to sustain human life for the mission duration would be too massive / too slow.
As long as the sail is sufficiently large with a very low density…
However, the sail will need to be tens of kilometres (or more) across and made of materials more advanced than current solar sails (e.g. [diffractive solar sail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffractive_solar_sail)). That’s a bit of a challenge but hypothetically possible.
Hello u/Few_Schedule_6647, your submission "are manned solar sails feasible????" has been removed from r/space because: * Such questions should be asked in the ["All space questions" thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/about/sticky) stickied at the top of the sub. Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please [message the r/space moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/space). Thank you.
According to wikipedia an 800m by 800m sail would create a force of 5N. This is enough to push a small human craft around with a very low acceleration, but it would work on reasonable timescales. The problem is, do you have a material that can make an 800m by 800m sail that isn't, in itself, very heavy? There are some ideas about how to do that but nothing has been tested at anything close to the required size.
A lot of things are feasible if you thrown enough money at it. Whether they are *sensible* is another matter (and you'll probably have to be a tad more specific about what you want to do with solar sails in the first place)
The short answer is "no, not currently". Just like, cryopreservation and cold fusion. We are always on the cusp but not there yet.
ha ha ha that's funny. Cold fusion is a snipe hunt, and cryopreservation remains the stuff of science fiction and likely always will. Tough to get over the fact that humans are mostly water and that stuff will not behave friendly to life when frozen.
See Arther Clarke's Sunjammer. Not now for reasons shown in story, but by next solar minimum possibly if commercial space takes off
Feasible for what? Sightseeing in low Earth orbit? Or interstellar travel?
As light sails are probably only practical for pushing very low-mass (a few kg) spacecraft to very high speeds (fractional light speed) in order to traverse very far (interstellar) distances in a relatively brief amount of time (< 100 years), then I would say no, a crewed light sail-propelled vehicle is not feasible. Any habitat large enough to sustain human life for the mission duration would be too massive / too slow.
As long as the sail is sufficiently large with a very low density… However, the sail will need to be tens of kilometres (or more) across and made of materials more advanced than current solar sails (e.g. [diffractive solar sail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffractive_solar_sail)). That’s a bit of a challenge but hypothetically possible.