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Yuri Pilipishin joined the forum in 2017
As of 2025/04/06 he has 29 posts
Yuri is the inventor of a design for a solar sail that maintains it's shape thanks to centrifugal force.
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=11066
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For Yuri re patent of rotating sail idea.....
Patenting was most likely invented in Europe, and possibly in France during the Napoleonic era.
I read a report recently of the patenting of a system for free balloon flight. The invention was a rope dangled over the side of a basket of a hydrogen balloon to regulate the rate of descent as the balloon approached the ground after venting hydrogen. The patent was granted in France.
It would make sense for you to secure a patent for your solar sail invention in the US. However, an up front investment on the order of 5000 (USD) is required. The first step is to hire a patent attorney, and the first step by that person is is make a preliminary filing. That can cost 2000 USD, but it secures the primacy of your invention if your invention does indeed prove out as first. The second allocation of 3000 USD is to pay for the research to prove the invention is indeed first.
The NewMars membership includes GW Johnson, who has secured a patent for a cactus harvesting machine. Dr. Johnson has been selling and building these machines for his neighbors for some time.
It is normal for an inventor to lack the funds to pay for a patent, or even to make a preliminary filing. The answer in your case might be to publish your idea in a major outlet, such as Popular Science. Very few such magazines survive in printed form, but they do survive as online publications who derive advertising income from the readers who see ads on their pages and click on them. For this reason, such magazines are looking for interesting content.
I think your idea has potential value as an attraction for readers, and by securing publication in a major outlet, you are establishing primacy.
You have already taken the first step toward securing primacy by posting in this forum, but this forum is not a major outlet (by any stretch).
If you would like assistance preparing a draft for publication, you are welcome to request it here. Your English is excellent, but there may be some small detail that someone could catch that would improve the appearance for an English speaking audience.
If you feel the need of confidentiality for something you might write, we can accommodate that, but at some point you have to trust others to help you get your idea from brilliant vision in your head to a Real Universe object on it's way to some Solar destination.
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For Yuri re rotating solar sails...
This idea appears to have merit. Please consider beginning the process of turning the idea from a post in a forum to real working hardware.
What I have in mind is catching 2024 YR4 when it next visits Earth in 2028. GW Johnson has shown that an intercept of the asteroid is within the capability of humans in 2025. A large number of your solar sails could be shipped to the asteroid in furled up form. Clumps of asteroid material could be loaded into buckets at the tips of the sail, as you have shown, and the sails could be spun up to return to a collection point in LEO.
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