A Cry Heard Round The World: Kim Sun-Il died desperate and alone, but he did not die unheard.
Looking At And Longing For Mars: Reflections on a childhood dream.
A Robot May Not Harm a Human Being. Is The Opposite True?: Thoughts on the future rights of artificial intelligence.
Long After The Boys Of Summer Have Gone: What makes a relationship work?
Winter Of Our Feline Discontent: What the cat wants, the cat gets. But what DOES it want?
To Tell The Truth: There may be no honor among thieves, but can't we find it even in a few good men and women?
Should The Human Brain Retire?: We know that we cannot win forever. We know that machines will continue to improve. So why don't we let the human brain retire gracefully now, with honors?
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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:41 PM
Sun - October 26, 2003
Talk About Sailing With The Stars As Your Compass
The 2004 flight of Cosmos 1 will begin aboard a modified Russian ballistic missile and will end when the $4 million spacecraft deploys eight 14 meter Mylar panels, stretched across inflatable spars. Opening like a flower, the panels will catch sunlight and, if practice follows theory, will boost the craft into higher orbit.
Solar sails would enable humans to cover great distances in space without the enormous chemical fuel payloads used by traditional rockets. But I wonder how vulnerable such sails will be to drifting space debris? The impact of a rock-sized object colliding with a 2.5 micron thick solar sail at 100 km./second isn't pretty to contemplate. Perhaps sail-powered spacecraft will simply carry spare sails, the way large sailing vessels carried spares in the past.
If the experiment proves successful, is it so far-fetched to imagine solar sail regattas around the planets in the next 100 years? I wonder what Larry Ellison would think of that?