TOTALLY OFF: Who died...

[M Holmes]

Bill & Cynthia writes:

>   M Holmes wrote:
> ....Giant lightsails...
>
> You're not a Larry Niven fan are you?

I've read a couple of his books.

There was a paper at NASA a few years back showing how lightsails would
be quite useful for clearing small pieces of debris (even a millimetre
fleck of paint at 17000 MPH will put a hell of a dent in a spacesuit) of
debris from orbit. The advantage being that it wouldn't take a Sputnik
Stan using impossible amounts of fuel to go collect it all.

Of course we haven't quite sorted out unrolling tethers in zerogee yet,
but in principle large lightsails being used as mirrors doesn't present
any serious technological problems. There#s a good chance we'll see
solar sailing ships in our lifetimes although ion engines look like they
may give them a run for their money.

FoFP