The Laser Elevator
Solar sails suck.
In the paper Laser Elevator: Momentum Transfer Using an Optical Resonator, Thomas R. Meyer and friends talk about a neat little trick for getting more momentum out of light (the paper’s not free online, but you can likely get it through your local school or library — it was published in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, 2002) The basic physics behind it are simple, but helped me realize some things about light that I hadn’t quite understood.
When a photon hits a…
3 years ago • Notes