News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ultrahigh Acceleration Neutral Particle Beam-Driven Sails by samsari on Monday January 07, 2019 @05:33AM (#18844162)
Shouldn't there be some sort of "lagrange-like" point where the sun's gravitational pull balances out the push of the solar wind?
Re:Ultrahigh Acceleration Neutral Particle Beam-Driven Sails by stult on Monday January 07, 2019 @07:21AM (#18844604)
No, or at least not any stable such point, because the solar wind is not constant. Plus it is orders of magnitude less powerful than the sun's gravity. It's only usable (in theory) for navigation because any ship is already in orbit around the sun and doesn't need to "cancel out" gravity in the sense that wings provide lift to an airplane or a rocket achieves orbit from the ground, but rather it needs to be able to gently and continuously nudge itself into higher or lower orbits.
Re:Ultrahigh Acceleration Neutral Particle Beam-Driven Sails by robkop on Monday January 07, 2019 @06:28AM (#18844382)
Not sure if such a balance exists for external bodies but there does exist a limit very similar that constrains the maximum size of a star [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_luminosity