Aerographite Solar Sails for 2% of Lightspeed Just From Launch Near the Sun | NextBigFuture.com
Date | 12th, Oct 2023 |
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Source | NextBigFuture - Scientific News Websites |
DESCRIPTION
Matloff and Joseph Meany conceptualize a large solar sail made of aerographite which would only use the Sun to power a long term interstellar mission. It is based on an inflatable, hollow-body sail. This is updating concepts that goes back at least to the 1980s. Matloff and Meany set up an aerographite-graphene variant using a 90% absorptive and 10% reflective layer of aerographite that effectively pushes against the Sun-facing surface of graphene.