One version of solar sail might give the ability to travel to the nearest stars

One version of solar sail might give the ability to travel to the nearest stars

Solar sails are impressive equipment because they are giving the ability to travel outside the solar system without external fuel. That means that the solar sail might have an impressive capacity for researching the solar system because the solar sail itself would not need any kind of fuel. But there is a possibility to make solar sails even more impressive than so-called passive sails.

If we would cover the extreme thin mylar layer with the silicon panels, what would give the electricity for the systems of the probe, that allows it to use ion motors, what would give more thrust than the sail itself could give. But when we are thinking about the solar sail and things, what is giving extreme high speed, we could use the external power source for that kind of systems.

In some ideas, the extreme thin mylar layer would be covered with the metal layer, what consists only one or two atom layers, and then the radio telescopes would send very high power radio impulses to that layer, what gives the probe electricity. And if there is some material what could be steamed, the system would impact with the radio- or laser radiation. That steam would also increase the thrust of the solar sail.

So the idea of those solar sails is that they are using the solar wind for traveling, and far away from the sun, the solar wind has not a very big effect on the speed. And that is the key problem for the solar sails, what is safest and ecological ideas on how to travel outside from the solar system. The hybrid solutions are very interesting ways to make that kind of spacecraft safer, and the connection of solar sails with the antimatter or some other exotic rocket solutions.

The idea is that solar sails would carry the spacecraft away from earth, and then the main engine would start. That kind of things are saving fuel and in destiny, the solar sails would also break the extreme fast spacecraft. If the solar sail would open near the targeted star, that thing will work like giant airbrake, what will slow the speed of the probe.

One solution what is forgotten when we are thinking about hybrid spacecraft is to use the solar sail as the giant antenna, what would induct the electricity to the spacecraft from the radio waves, what would send to it by using masers, as I have written before. But there is another way to increase the speed, and that is cover the solar sail with uranium or plutonium.

Then there would cause the fission in that layer by warming it or target the particle shower what comes from nuclear reactor to that layer. That system is the less radical version of the motor, what is created for antimatter rocket. The big surface area would help to decrease the temperature of fission and in those solutions the cooling the reactor is easier because the giant solar sail would help to decrease the temperature.

That system would base the technology, where the nuclear reactor is between the solar sail and the exhaust channel. The nuclear particles from the reactor would cause fission in the uranium layer, and also the particles what are sending backward would give thrust for the probe. And instruments might be far ahead of the motor after a very long stick, where are lots of highly radioactive material, what can disturb sensors.