Sure, but it would be less efficient than a sail, and since the incoming radiation would impart inertia on the solar panels, you would still be limited on where you could steer.
Sure, but it would be less efficient than a sail, and since the incoming radiation would impart inertia on the solar panels, you would still be limited on where you could steer.
I ditched my smartphone spring of 2023. Still use it on WiFi at home, but every time I leave the house, I only carry a fliphone.
Every time a stranger asks me about it, they say something like “I wish I could ditch my smartphone.” Like I get it. It’s not easy. I can’t even go to a baseball game unless my wife has our tickets on her phone. Paying for parking sometimes requires an app.
Yet apparently everyone hates this thing that they are now required to carry around.
How did we get here?
(For the US market. They still make sedans for Europe)
One of the temporary fixes for the Chevy Bolt fires was to update the software to detect if the battery was about to go up and then honk the horn to warn everyone which I think is hilarious.
The solar sail reflects light instead of absorbing it so you get to double dip on photon momentum.
And sure, you can steer with the laser I suppose, but with that kind of super weak deltaV, you’re not going to be exactly doing donuts in the solar system.
Even the massive solar sail only imparts a super small amount of force. It’s only useful because it does so for free over a long period of time with no air resistance.
You’d be better off using a conventional thruster to do whatever steering you needed to do before letting the sail take over. It’s not like you need to steer around any obstacles.