Thread: Solar powered space ship?

could a spaceship be powered by solar power? it could use the energy from our sun to get around our solar system. it could have back up fuel to get it to the next star (or star system) then it can obtain the solar power from that star and move so forth. i am rambling but someone put their two cents in.

with current technology, NO. the current planed Jupiter's Moon project will be using battery power as, solar power is not achievable from that distance to the sun. we do have a couple probes which gave us the recent 3D pictures of the sun, which i understand operate on solar and of course the Mar's robots but as you go further out the process is not achievable....

Originally Posted by Darth Lord Sidious

could a spaceship be powered by solar power? it could use the energy from our sun to get around our solar system. it could have back up fuel to get it to the next star (or star system) then it can obtain the solar power from that star and move so forth. i am rambling but someone put their two cents in.

Not really. The internal operating systems can involve solar power but not the actual energy to accelerate the craft and decelerate it.

Think of a watch battery...then a tanker truck full of fuel next to it. That's the difference on ratio of running the systems on the craft compared to propelling it in a modest flight. Getting up any caft that was as big as a bus to a tenth the speed of light would involve more energy than man uses in the world in a decade AND as much would be needed to decelerate it again.

Solar sails.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/e...larsails.shtml
http://solarsails.info/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail

but beware! Some say it won't work.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3895

Nevertheless NASA continue development:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7362

that solar sails thing sounds freakin awesome! yeah, it would take eight years to each the edge of our solar system but its 5 times faster than rocket power. i would have never guessed sails tho...but i KNOW the answer to extremely fast and far space travel is right under our noses. one day...

Aren't most satellites at least solar powered?

The op is looking for solar power to provide the energy to move the satellite, not just to operate its electronics.