Stuff You Should Know - Will solar sails take us to the stars?

Episode Date: December 31, 2013

We have within our grasp here on Earth the technology that could make interstellar travel a reality within as little as a few decades and it doesn't require any exotic fuel. In fact, it only requires sunlight and an initial blast into orbit to begin a steadily increasing sail to the stars. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack

and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant's with me. Jerry's over there so it's Stuff You Should Know. On a Friday. Yeah it's a sleepy Friday here. Yeah there's like two other people in the whole office. Yeah I think the work from home program is great and I think that apparently 99% of us utilize that on Fridays. Yeah I kind of need to I like it. Oh it's awesome.

It's nice and quiet. Yeah you know these companies like that are trying to get people to come back in not telework. Oh really? Is that a new movement? The non-teleworking movement? All right that didn't make much sense. I'm going backwards. Back in time. Yeah you know. Might as well make them drive to work in a horse-drawn carriage. Yeah and wear a suit and tie on Fridays. Yeah good to see you my friend. Thanks good to see you too man. Are we going to sail through the galaxy together? Yeah I've got one. I've got an intro. So about 400 years ago there was an astronomer named Johann Kepler. I've heard of him. Johannes Kepler. Yeah. Take your pick. Is the S silent? Who knows? I think Johannes. He founded the Kepler Effect. Yeah. So he also had this idea that there was a what's

called the solar wind that there was a wind that blew through space and it was evidenced by the curvature of comet's tails. You could see them just kind of bending a little bit and that was because they were being blown by the wind. So Kepler as was pretty much the thinking at the time during the age of exploration when he lived said maybe we should construct some sales some mighty sales that can survive in outer space and just sail around the galaxy. That's pretty forward thinking. It is forward thinking and Kepler was wrong about the solar wind. There isn't a wind in space although there is solar wind now but it's just some ion positively charged ions that hit the magnetosphere of the earth and create the northern and southern lights.

Yeah. It's not like a warm wind literally blowing through space. Exactly. But Kepler's suggestion led to just this huge incredible irony wherein we have figured out now how to sail through space. Yeah. Not using wind but using sunlight. And it's been done. Yeah. It's been it's been proven now several times. I think in 2010 Japan did it and in 2015 a pretty major one is going to set sail. Yeah. The biggest one for sure. Yeah. It's going to literally set sail. I saw something like 13,000 square feet. That one is huge. Yeah. It's a I think 10 city blocks. No. That was a different one. I'm sorry. Okay. 13,000 square feet though is definitely the largest one that will have been put in space. Yeah. There was one that was a 10 meter square called the nano sail that was that

worked just fine that NASA launched was up in orbit for a year and then came back down and they were able to do all sorts of cool stuff with it. And even before then apparently the idea of sailing through space this analogy between space and the oceans is not lost on anybody who's into this whole idea. And even before this the current incarnation there were uses of solar sails. Like in the 70s I think Voyager 2 which is one of those deep space probes was having trouble with its attitude. It was having attitude problem and it needed an adjustment. So the controllers down on the ground turned its solar arrays and used them like a solar sail to correct its attitude worked. And then it worked enough that in the 70s member Haley's comment. Sure. Okay. Well that was

1986 that it came through and we're going to be the last generation to be able to see it twice probably. When's it coming back? I think it was 60 years or 60 years. Is it? So let's see that would be 2054. Yeah it'll be like 75. Yeah we'll make it. We'll see. There was a whole NASA program that lasted about a year to rendezvous with a solar sail using a solar sail to rendezvous with Haley's comment. Oh yeah. I don't know what they were going to do when they came upon it. Right. But the idea of a solar sail and the fact that a solar sail will work has been proven and known since at least the 1970s. But only recently have we been launching these things and getting them to do what we want. Which is travel through space without the use of rocket fuel. Yeah because

that's a huge thing man. Rockets use a lot of fuel and it's a constraint. It is. In fact the weight of the space shuttle the dearly departed space shuttle was 95% fuel and the way rockets work in general is they expend their they shoot their payload to get them going and then they cruise basically. But that's a lot of payload and a lot of fuel. Right. And but they're not just constantly like have their foot on the accelerator you know because they can't tow around all that fuel. No. Well even if they did just sit there and have the gas pedal to the metal all the way eventually they're going to run out of fuel too. So it's a double constraint. Yeah. You have a finite amount of fuel and you can't accelerate constantly. Plus there's also a third one too that the solar

sail pretty much has over a rocket. It can return to earth which is called the orbiting. Right. So let's talk about this. Like what do you need to have a solar sail like it's a pretty basic simple. It really is. Yeah. But it's pretty much the future of space travel. We've talked about antimatter spacecraft before. Yeah that might have been where we'd mentioned this actually. Okay. Because I definitely know we've touched on this once. To put these two together if the solar sail is definitely the winner antimatter spacecraft requires us to be able to produce something that doesn't exist yet. Yeah. Which is an I can't remember an antiproton maybe. Yeah I can't remember. This is like we've got everything we need right now to do this. So let's

do it. What we need continuous force from the sunlight. You need a large mirror that's really thin. We'll get into that. And you need something to launch it. You can't launch these things from the ground. They do great once you get them up there but you're still going to have to launch it into space. Yeah even still it's such a minor constraint. It's ridiculous. A scoff at its inclusion. And the reason this works is because light it releases electromagnetic radiation in the form of protons and these protons even though they don't have mass photons. What do I say protons. These photons even though they don't have mass they have momentum. Yes. And that is that momentum when it hits a solar sail is just like a little wind blowing a sail. It transfers its energy.

Yep. And it's just it's almost the same thing as a wind blowing a sail. Yeah when you put a bunch of them together it is very much like that especially if you think of wind as little discrete packets of wind. Yeah. This is little discrete packets of light. And also Chuck when a photon hits a reflective surface a highly reflective surface it transfers its momentum twice. The first time when it hits it yeah pushes it along and then when it pushes off to bounce off to reflect so it transfers momentum twice. So photons hitting a reflective surface in outer space the vacuum of space where there's no resistance. That's something that you know you can kind of get behind. Yeah it's significant. And if you look at an individual photon or even sunlight as a whole it doesn't have

a lot of it doesn't exert a lot of force. It's something like 9 Newtons per square mile. Yeah like that's the reason they can't take off from the ground. 9 Newtons is what you get from the sun to the earth. Right. In an astronomical unit right 93 million miles you're going to get about 9 Newtons of force. That's how much yeah by the time they reach this this area that's how much force they have. Yeah which is the reason why you can't take off from the earth right with a solar sail because you need about 1.67 million Newtons of force for a lift off of like a rocket. And then they're way behind as far as lifting off from the ground. Right and once in outer space too a rocket is clearly superior for quick acceleration because it can produce like 2.1 million Newtons of

thrust and again sunlight produces 9 yeah 2.1 million compared to 9 but the big advantage is again your solar sail doesn't use any kind of fuel once it's unfurled and deployed. Yeah and it can accelerate constantly and this is the big advantage that it has over rockets. Yeah well that flashy rocket might blast off and shoot its payload and go zooming through space the little solar sail is just kind of going about its way getting a little faster getting a little faster. Yeah and eventually that rocket though is going to go through all its fuel and the little solar sail is going to catch up to it because exactly it constantly has its foot on the gas. As a matter of fact there's a really good analogy in here I guess it's not even an analogy it's some sort of

statement maybe that if we launch the solar sail right now it would take about eight years for it to catch up to Voyager 1 which is the most distant rocket based or fuel based spacecraft in the universe that we've launched it's toward the edge of the solar system right now. Which by the way did you know that all of the images you've seen of the swirling Milky Way galaxy overhead are fake. I didn't know that. We don't have any way to produce that photograph we've reached the edge of our solar system we have no way of looking above the entire galaxy. Right. So all of this is what we surmise the Milky Way to look like. Here's our best guess. Yeah but it's never presented that way you think like well it's the

that's our photos of the Milky Way I never thought like. Right that's impossible. Exactly. Like we're not even sure how many arms the thing has. Really? Yeah. Wow. I just think it's a little arrogant to produce pictures like that and not say this is an artist rendering this is an artist rendering. It probably says that at some point right. I never noticed it. It's like those fake newspaper articles where you get to the end of it and says this is an advertisement. Right yeah. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell all podcast the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope but I promise you

this we have a lot to talk about for two decades. Chris Harrison saw it all and now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this moving forward and letting everybody here for me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly every day of my life I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Um, all right. So we, we were talking about the, uh, it would take eight years to reach the Voyager. Yeah. And that's like one of the big which has been sailing for 20 years. Yeah. And that's one of the, and that, that may be the biggest advantage of a solar sale is deep space exploration because the problem with anything else is going to eventually going to run out of fuel. Right. And that's what this one in 2015, I think it's set to go deeper into space than anything ever.

Yeah. If it makes it and probably pretty quickly. So like the whole advantage of, um, of this is that when the solar sale starts to pick up, let's talk about how fast it moves real quick. You want to, does it haul butt and not at first. So it, it picks up one millimeter per second of movement every second, once it starts. So it's moving a millimeter a second at first. Okay. That is not fast at all. No, no. Um, by comparison, a, uh, a rocket moves about 56 meters a second, something like that. That's meters. Right. Yeah. So it begins very slowly. Right. Yes. But then it starts to accelerate. There's constant acceleration. And by the end of a day, uh, it'll have reached 310 kilometers per hour. See, slow and steady. And it will have

already traveled for 4700 miles. By the end of 12 days, it will have accelerated to 3700 kilometers per hour. That's fast. And eventually Chuck, um, it's going to start traveling about up to 200,000 miles an hour. That's 324,000 kilometers per hour. That's basically you would make it from New York to Los Angeles on the ground in less than a minute. That's pretty quick. It is quick, but get this. They figured out that if you use ground based light propulsion, which would use a lot of energy, um, to direct the lasers at this thing, you could get it up to something like 18,000 miles per second, 18,600 miles per second, which is a tenth of the speed of light. And once we do that, we could make it to a nearby star in about 20 years. That's pretty good. We could make

it to outer planets within a couple of weeks. Wow. Yeah. So the potential for this thing is enormous. Because it's proven, it uses no fuel, at least if you're using the sun. And it's the technology that could get us into interstellar travel. That's pretty awesome. So what's it made of? Well, the, the sail itself is key because it's got to be super lightweight and super thin. You can't just fly a big mirror up there. Right. Um, what NASA is working with today is something called CP1 and it is 100 times thinner than a sheet of stationary. That's crazy. That is crazy. I know they worked with Mylar for a little while, aluminum reinforced Mylar, which if you've ever seen Mylar balloons, like that's super thin. It's like a foil. And it's one fourth the thickness

of a one ply plastic bag. And that was the Cosmos one that used the Mylar sail. Yeah. But basically, all these sails are reflective. It's got to be reflective because the photon has to bounce off of it. Right. And it's got to be super lightweight and super thin. And like any sail, the larger, the better. Yeah. You know, the more photons you can catch, the more speed you're going to get, I guess, eventually. So you said the one that's going up 2015 is called the solar sail demonstrator. It's dubbed the sun jammer, which is after an Arthur C. Clark story. And that apparently is where solar sailing was term was coined Arthur C. Clark. Yeah. Love that guy. Yeah. But that's the one that's going up in 2015. He was 2001, a space Odyssey, right? Yeah. Okay. And it apparently

collapses down to something the size of a dishwasher and weighs 110 pounds. You and I could lift that together. Yeah. And I could lift that by myself. They Wow. They pack the thing into a rocket, shoot it up into space. Once it's in space and orbit, it gets kind of shot out a little bit. Yeah. And then it, I guess, inflates. I believe the booms that hold the sails in place are inflatable, which makes them even more lightweight. Yeah. It's almost like a kite. If you imagine the supports of a kite were all just inflatable, and you would just blow it up. Those would, those forms would take shape as buttresses. And then the sail would unfurl. Right. And then then your sun jamming. Yeah. Land ho. You talked about lasers. That is one of the,

I guess, co fuels, even though it's not a fuel, that these things might use if there aren't enough photons, maybe they can use lasers to continue to power these. Right. But not for launch, though, right? Or could they use them for launch? It looks like they did launch it somehow. I think you could. I think it'd just be slow. Okay. But I think that the probably the most immediately usable method would be to launch it into space and then hit it with a laser once it's in space. Right. I also saw microwave beams have been used, too. Yeah. There's a whole other kind of competing microwave sale. But the problem is they have to be a lot bigger because of the larger wavelength of a microwave. Seems like using all these things in conjunction together

is probably a good way to go. Yeah. You know, yeah. Microwave juice, little laser juice, little photon juice. Why not use whatever you can? Yeah. But yeah, the difference between just using sunlight, one of the problems with sunlight is you have to be going away from the sun because that's the way the direction the photons are going to push. Oh, yeah. I didn't think about that. And they've pointed out where you can go toward the sun, but you have to basically go out and then come back around and use the photons to slow you down. Right. Which just seems kind of. Yeah. I wonder if any of these are ever going to be manned. They could be if we can figure out how to not crush people in 18,600 miles per second speed.

Well, I guess that's true because can you slow these things down? Yeah, I don't know. That's a good question. Yeah, I don't know. The other question I had about this that I couldn't find anything on is if these things are a hundredth the thickness of a sheet of stationary. Yeah. And I've seen gravity. So there's a lot of debris in space. Yeah. Howard, what's keeping the space debris from just punching holes right in it? Yeah. And just tearing it to shreds. Well, I think it's probably stronger than you would think considering how thin it is. Yeah. Because it's reinforced. But yeah, you're right. Well, there's gravity, man. And like solid things were just blown to bits. That guy's face.

Yeah. Did you like that movie? Yeah, I did. I didn't go into it expecting the best movie ever like a lot of people did. Yeah. And like, you know, a lot of hype. They'll crank Neil deGrasse Tyson. We should call it angular momentum, not gravity. It's like, this is a blockbuster Hollywood movie. You know, it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. I thought it was great. And if you're learning your science from Sandra Bullock, yeah, you're in trouble. Yeah. Yeah. You should learn it from other people like Neil deGrasse Tyson. Sure. The other thing that I saw that solar sales can be easily used for is deorbiting that space debris. Apparently, you can send some stuff up there, have it go into an orbit, capture a bunch of the space debris, I guess just basically

wrap itself around it and then bring it down. Huh. I think the way that you bring it down is like cleaning up space is pretty much it's a danger. It's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the way that you bring solar sales down so easily is because when you don't need fuel to bring them down. Yeah. And you can just angle them a certain way so that the sunlight pushes them down toward earth and they burn up. Oh, yeah. That's pretty nifty. It is. So we may be using them just around earth first, but these are the things that could very easily lead to interstellar travel within our lifetime. That's pretty cool. We're talking 20 years. Right now, it takes a lot longer than that without this. Yeah. And definitely we should follow up in 2015

on the, is that the Sunjammer? Yeah, which is next year now because this is our New Year's Eve episode, isn't it? Yeah, I think so actually. Nice. So we're already in 2014. Or we're about to be, depending on when you're listening to this or when it comes out. So in just a year or more, the Sunjammer will be doing its thing. Yeah, we should do a follow up on it. My money's on this one. Maglev trains. Yeah. People going without refrigerators. That's the future. Yeah. Wiping your butt with cloth. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I like this one. I think the solar sale is literally the thing of the future. Yeah, I like it too, man. Yeah. You want to wish everybody a happy New Year? Happy New Year, everyone. Happy New Year. And I'd also like to

say a very happy birthday to my sweet wife. That's right. I always forget it's, what was the date? 30th. 30th. Yumi's birthday is the 30th. Well, happy birthday, Yumi. And happy New Year's, everyone, and be safe. And we sail into the future. If you want to know more about solar sailing, you can type that word in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a message break. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison

saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay,

I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye,

bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, Chuck, it's time for Listener Mail. What am I going to call this? I'm going to call this from Roanoke, Virginia, just because that's easy. Death Metal from Roanoke. Hey guys, I was listening to the episode, Why Does Music Provoke Emotion? Love that episode, by the way, because music has been such an integral part of my life and everything I do. It also reminded me of an experience I had recently. Metal music has always been my favorite genre. Oh, I know this email. Did you read it? Yeah. I guess I just really connect with it. Anyway, I recently decided to try out the black metal subgenre. I guess he

previously was into light metal. Right. I just figured that. New metal? Yeah. So I purchased Dark Throne's Transylvanian Hunger. Put it in my car CD player and started driving with the music. When the music started, I got the strangest feeling. It reminded me of Christmas. While this seems like the last reaction one would get from such a type of music, I think I figured it out. The music itself makes me think of icy, snowy winters, which I, of course, associate with the joy of snow around Christmas as a child. Between this and the relaxing tremolo guitars that were carrying the music, the cool breeze that I felt through the car windows and the pale moonlight, the whole experience made me feel a happiness

that resembled the kind I usually get around Christmas time. I just found it really fascinating as something that I found so relaxing would probably make most listeners want to scream in a fashion not unlike the vocalist of most of these bands. It's so true that music can yield a different reaction from everyone. Right. Or AET. Anyway, I just thought you might find that interesting and thanks for the great show. That is from Patrick Hagar in Roanoke, Virginia. I think you have to say Hagar. Well, I wanted to. But it's H-A-G-E-R, not A-R. You should change his name to Hagar with a couple of them. Yeah. It's like, then you're listening to Transylvanian Nightmare. What was it called? Yeah, I think that was right. Transylvanian Hunger.

Manhattan Transfer. No, no. That's the opposite of Death Metal. I got you. If you want to let us know about some strange reaction you had to something we've discussed. Right. Aside from drowsiness. Right. Because that's not very strange. Yeah, we put a lot of people to sleep. Yeah, I heard Jesse Thorne talking about the other day about what a backhanded compliment that is or how it always makes them feel bad. It doesn't bother me. No. And it was on Judge Don Hodgman. And Hodgman was like, no, man, people are saying they're in a very intimate moment. You are relaxing them into sleep. Right. And that's a compliment. So that's how I choose to take it. Hodgman, he's got such a great perspective on things. I know. Jesse, come on, buddy. Lighten up.

Yeah. If you want to tell Jesse to lighten up or if you want to tell us about some weird reaction you've had, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.discurry.com and you can hang out with us at our home on the web, your gateway to the new year stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.