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I understand "tacking" into the wind in a yacht on Earth, but that uses the pressure of the water on the hull and the keel in such a way as to allow you to sail almost straight into the wind. (Well ... within, say, 30 degrees of straight into the wind, anyway.)
There's nothing for the ship to push against in interplanetary space, so tacking would be difficult, I think.
I recall reading somewhere the idea was to use a "magnetic keel" to "anchor" the ship to allow her to change direction. It occurs to me you might also change the attitude of the sail relative to the sun, to change the amount of "solation". (Is there a word for that?)
ronondexfan, more sails definitely gives you more benefit. The photon pressure equation is just flux / c (speed of light). So optimizing to one end of the spectrum won't do much good, you want to absorb the whole spectrum as much as you can. It may turn out that sails that are optimized to one end are lighter and therefore more efficient than sails that absorb more spectrum, though.
As far as adding a magnetic sail there's a wonderful concept called Dusty M2P2 that may be of interest. It uses a plasma to inflate the mag sail and if you put in little particles that reflect light it may be a successful propulsion method.
Google search for it: https://www.google.com/search?q=Dusty+M2P2
Thx a bunch!
I ask about the optimizing because of a post elsewhere here, somewhere, about the thrust increasing at the red end. It seems like taking maximum advantage of that is a good idea.
FYI: If you're going to create Martian Metals Merchant, you'll need to change the abbreviation, or 3M is liable to sue...:P
Is it my browser, or what? Every single page I look at, eventually, the replies move to the right of the open window until they're completely unreadable...
Some thoughts.
#Do you get any benefit from adding more sails, like with sailing ships?
#Can you improve sail performance by optimizing absorption on red end of spectrum, to take advantage of Doppler?
#Can you also add magnetic sails & double your thrust without causing problems?
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