if you have the time (or are under escape velocity)
couldn't you angle your sail such that it was acting more to slow you down
rather than directly accelerate you away?
I'd imagine that most of the time most solar sailors would be tuned to
increasing their angular velocity rather than trying to sail directly away
from the sun.
if you did try to sail directly away from the sun unless your thrust to
weight was > 1 you would just wind up in a slightly higher orbit, IE the
effect would be similar to slightly reducing gravity.

most schemes I have seen involve putting the sail initially into a highly
elliptical orbit and having it point towards the sun while it is on the
outbound part of the orbit then rotate the sail so it is edge on as it falls
back towards the sun. Rinse Lather and repeat... often.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu]On Behalf
> Of David Minkler
> Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2004 06:16
> To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
> Subject: Re: [OT]: SpaceShipOne - Blacksky!
>
>
> I'm not a sailor, so I can't say that I know but ...
>
> Isn't this a possibility in a sailboat only because you have the ability
> to take advantage of the boats motion through the water to steer it
> somewhat into the wind?  With no water to work against, I can't see how
> you could get inbound velocity from the outbound solar wind alone.  Help
> me understand if I'm wrong.
>
> Thanks,
> Dave
>
> Howard Winter wrote:
>
> >Mike,
> >
> >On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 14:05:01 -0500, Mike Hord wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>...<
> >>The above website goes in depth about solar force.  Their
> estimate is that,
> >>at 1 AU, .00000453 Newtons per square meter (.000000000656 PSI).
> >>
> >>And thats at 1 AU.  Go out to Saturn or interstellar space and see what
> >>kind of push you get.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Yes, and that's directly away from the Sun.  To travel in any
> other direction (coming back home, for example)
> >you'd have to tack like a conventional sailing boat, reducing
> the effective thrust considerably!
> >
> >Cheers,
> >
> >
> >Howard Winter
> >St.Albans, England
> >
> >
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> >
> >
>
>
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