No, because the solar wind drops off around 100 AU, and the power of the solar wind is going to reduce the farther out you are. These kinds of craft would get much more acceleration from a laser array that can put much more concentrated energy into the sail. But just like the solar wind, it will lose power the farther away from the array it is, along with any kind of intermediary debris attenuating the beam or unfavorable angles between the array and the craft.
So you can get these to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, but I don’t think we’d be able to get anywhere close to c with this kind of a setup.
Doesn’t “solar wind” refer to the physical particles emitted from the sun? Like hydrogen, helium, etc ejected from the sun’s outer layers?
My understanding is that the solar sail is propelled mostly by the photons themselves, not the atomic particles that may also be reaching it.
Of course this probably doesn’t change your argument at all, since the intensity of light drops off precipitously as you fly further and further from the sun.
No, because the solar wind drops off around 100 AU, and the power of the solar wind is going to reduce the farther out you are. These kinds of craft would get much more acceleration from a laser array that can put much more concentrated energy into the sail. But just like the solar wind, it will lose power the farther away from the array it is, along with any kind of intermediary debris attenuating the beam or unfavorable angles between the array and the craft.
So you can get these to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, but I don’t think we’d be able to get anywhere close to c with this kind of a setup.
Doesn’t “solar wind” refer to the physical particles emitted from the sun? Like hydrogen, helium, etc ejected from the sun’s outer layers?
My understanding is that the solar sail is propelled mostly by the photons themselves, not the atomic particles that may also be reaching it.
Of course this probably doesn’t change your argument at all, since the intensity of light drops off precipitously as you fly further and further from the sun.