Science Fiction to Science Fact: Solar Sails

Description

Explores how advance in science and technology could theoretically allow scientists to develop solar sails as a form of energy to enable travel beyond our planet and solar system.

Do you lose yourself in daydreams about invisibility cloaks, tractor beams and replicators? Do you wish that you could have been born a few hundred years later, when all of these things are a reality? This series explores the real-life science behind some of our favourite science fiction gadgets and shows how a future filled with space shuttles, solar sails and bionic limbs might be closer than you think!

Table of Contents

1. Solar sails: the fiction
2. Sailing around the Solar System
3. Solar sails: the reality
4. What is light?
5. The science of solar sails
6. Angles and orbits
7. NASA’s asteroid mission
8. Other uses for solar sails
9. Beyond the Solar System
10. E-sails
11. Mission: Starshot
12. Habitable planets
13. Interstellar sailing trips
14. Solar sails: the future
15. Glossary
16. Index