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Solar Sailing: Technology, Dynamics and Mission Applications (Springer Praxis Books / Astronomy and Planetary Sciences) - Hardcover
Synopsis
Solar sailing - using the sun as a propellant - offers the possibility of low-cost long-distance missions that are impossible with conventional spacecraft. This first comprehensive book on this propulsion method provides a detailed account of solar sailing, at a high technical level, but in a way accessible to the scientifically informed layperson. Solar sail orbital dynamics and solar radiation pressure form the foundations of the book, but the engineering design of solar sails is also considered, along with potential mission applications.
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From the Author
This book is now available from Springer-Verlag
Foreword:
Dear Reader: You are holding in your hands -the- reference book on Solar Sailing. There have been other books on various aspects of solar sails (you will find them appropriately listed on page 31 of this book), but whereas the other books have concentrated on one aspect (mathematically rigorous solar sail astrodynamics for mathematicians) or another (strut and film solar sail construction techniques for hardware engineers) or another (fun missions using solar sails for space enthusiasts), you will find in this book that Colin McInnes, rigorous mathematician, practical aerospace engineer, and inspiring writer, has covered all the aspects. This book not only contains all the right mathematical formulas that you need to design your own "pole-sitter" solar-sail spacecraft, whether the "pole" is that of the Sun, Earth, Mars or Mercury, but it also describes in detail how to design and build the sails. Finally, inspires you to get busy doing so, by outlining all the interesting missions that solar sails can do that no other propulsion system can do, from "hanging" between here and the Sun to warn of impending solar flares about to black out entire continents, to multiple sample returns from a multiple asteroid mission, to round trip missions to the stars -- all using that miraculous propulsion system that uses no energy, uses no propellant, and lasts forever -- solar sails.
Dr. Robert L. Forward Forward Unlimited
Synopsis
An introductory text and technical reference on solar sailing. The author assesses the benefits and limitations of solar sailing and comes to the conclusion that it really does offer the possibility of low-cost space missions, impossible for any other type of conventional spacecraft. The idea of solar sailing has been around for decades. In the 1920s, Soviet pioneers of astronautics suggested using vast sails to harness the pressure of sunlight to propel spacecraft to cosmic velocities. The solar wind is very tenuous, so practical solar sails would have to be vast structures of extraordinarily low mass and near-perfect reflectors. Finally, over 70 years on, solar sailing is being taken seriously as a means of spacecraft propulsion.
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