With composite booms, the NASA principal investigator believes we could make 1000 to 4000 square meter solar sails today with a funded project. Then with the learnings from that mission we could rapidly advance to 10,000 square meter solar sails.
Les Johnson believes that he can see the development path to kilometer sails with a graphene development program.
They are working on the steering issues for e-sails. At 6 kilovolts at one AU the e-sail wires have 66 meter fields that converts thin wires into virtual sails. The expanding fields as they get farther away means the thrust drops at 1/r and not 1/r2
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
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