DIY Sci-Fi: science fiction, science fact.When the first "solar sail solar sail A saillike device that is made of lightweight and highly reflective material and attached to a spacecraft to harness the radiation pressure of the solar wind and light for propulsion. Also called light sail. " vehicle, Cosmos 1, was lost in space last June, it looked like the ship--which uses pressure from sunlight to ply outer space--had joined a long line of cosmicsized failures. But Cosmos 1 represented a more enlightened way to test far-out theories. The effort was funded not by taxes but by the Planetary Society The Planetary Society is a large, publicly supported, not-for-profit organization that has many research projects related to astronomy. It is based in Pasadena, California (the same city as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory) but has an international membership. , a private, California-based space advocacy Space advocacy can be described as the general position supporting, pleading or arguing for[1]the idea or cause of space exploration and settlements. It is a form of advocacy that specifically includes support for private space initiatives and is also a political organization. Another business-backed group has a 2010 target date for an operational "space elevator A space elevator is a proposed megastructure designed to transport material from a celestial body's surface into space, first conceived by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.[1] Many different types of space elevators have been suggested. ." Once merely a plot device in Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (born 16 December 1917) is a British science-fiction author and inventor, most famous for his novel , and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the . novels, the idea of a 22,300-mile-long cable car running from the earth's surface into space is now a testable proposition. Should it work, the cost of getting stuff into orbit would plummet. And last year, space entrepreneur Burt Rutan snagged the $10 million Ansari X Prize The Ansari X PRIZE was a space competition in which the X PRIZE Foundation offered a US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. for sending his SpaceShip One 100 kilometers above the earth. His ultimate goal is routine space tourism. Taken together, these efforts suggest a swing back toward individuals and small private entities tackling difficult scientific problems. While governments have long been at the forefront of space exploration, cheap computing power has brought complex design and engineering tasks within reach of small teams of problem solvers. The government-directed, Manhattan Project-style program diverges from the historic pattern of technological breakthroughs. The bureaucracyheavy approach is a sad contrast with legions of tinkerers and do-it-yourselfers, each nimble enough to strike out in new directions when faced with inevitable but temporary setbacks. In that spirit, the Planetary Society vows to give solar sailing a second try. |
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