The best idea right now on how to travel fast in space if you would want to reach very far (like outside of our solar system), seems to be solar sails.
But why would light waves alone from the sun be able to push anything at all on a human scale and even more so at really high speeds, like 10-50 % of the speed of light is numbers I’ve seen, which seems insane. Of course this haven’t been done yet, but the basic idea seems to be based on solid science.
I don’t understand how this could work even in theory tho. Like light waves have energy so I could see how that could apply force to an object, but just a small amount. Space have no resistance so if you push something you can keep it going for pretty much forever.
But how do people think that it could get you speeds that even mattered in space and even more so those mind boggling speeds?
In: Physics
You need a very light and large sail. Materials we can manufacture right now wouldn’t really be that doable for human space travel. A very tiny probe is maybe almost doable, tho still not quite.
Theoretically, if you can manufacture arbitraly large and extremely light sail, it adds enough solar pressure over a large enough area.
Right now, for human interstellar space travel, nuclear propulsion would prolly be more realistic, tho even that has some issues and pitfalls.
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