This sounds incredibly legit, but question: Could you not gain a shit ton of momentum sailing directly with the wind in a regular boat, then drop your sails and steer into the direction of it to maintain some amount of velocity for an amount of time? Feels like the same principle could be applied here, especially because they would swap between photon momentum and gravitational momentum
Yeah, in space there’s nothing to push against so all turning the sail would do would be presenting a smaller surface to be pushed directly away from the sun
Can a solar sail be used to put a craft into the sun?
deleted by creator
My intuition would say no, but to be honest, I don’t understand the physics of either solar or watercraft sails.
deleted by creator
This sounds incredibly legit, but question: Could you not gain a shit ton of momentum sailing directly with the wind in a regular boat, then drop your sails and steer into the direction of it to maintain some amount of velocity for an amount of time? Feels like the same principle could be applied here, especially because they would swap between photon momentum and gravitational momentum
deleted by creator
Yeah, in space there’s nothing to push against so all turning the sail would do would be presenting a smaller surface to be pushed directly away from the sun
If it would work, it would be by stopping the angular momentum around the sun, then letting the sun’s gravity pull the object in.
Yes, because of the way orbits work, you just need to add velocity horizontal to the orbit, which is just as easy going into the sun as out of it.
So a solar sail is just as good both in and out of the sun.