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Friday, April 25, 2008

Solar sailing

Nobody knows which types of propulsion will prevail in future space travel. Perhaps one key technology will be solar sails:
A team of scientists in Finland has woven a new type of spider web-like solar sail, with positively charged wires, that might be able to repel positive ions in the solar wind and thus propel itself through space.
I look forward to a time when solar-sail snobs look down upon nuclear-rocket people as uncouth.