The article began relating 17th Century astronomer Johanne Kepler observing comets and seeing "that their tails always pointed away from the sun, no matter which direction they were traveling. To Kepler, it meant only one thing: the comet tails were being blown from the sun."
Indeed, "the sun produces a wind in space" and "it can be harnessed," said the piece. "First, there are particles of light streaming from the sun constantly, each carrying a tiny bit of momentum. Second, there is a flow of charged particles, mostly protons and electrons, also moving outwards from the sun. We call the charges particles the solar wind, but both streams are blowing a gale"that's in the vacuum of space.
Japan launched its Ikaros spacecraft in 2010sailing in space using the energy from the sun.
Last year, the LightSail 2 mission of The Planetary Society was launchedand it's still up in space, flying with the sun's energy.
New systems using solar power are being developed - past the current use of thin film such as Mylar for solar sails.
The New Scientist article spoke of scientists "who want to use these new techniques to set a course for worlds currently far beyond our reachnamely the planets orbiting our nearest star, Alpha Centauri."
Back to Challenger and RTGs and their generation of a little amount of electricity, less than a hair dryer uses, for on-board electrical systems, NASA finally saw the light, sunlight.
In 2011 it launched the Juno space probe to Jupiter-which instead of an RTGs used three solar arrays to generate onboard electricity. Juno is still up there, orbiting and studying Jupiter, where sunlight is a hundredth of what it is on Earth.
After the SNAP 9-A disaster, NASA stopped using RTGs for satellites and was instrumental in developing solar photovoltaic technology. All satellites launched today use solaras does the International Space Station.
The leading group since 1992 challenging the use of nuclear power in space is the Maine-based Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space (www.space4peace.org).
Its long-time coordinator, Bruce Gagnon, comments: "The Elon Musk plan to explode 10,000 nukes over Mars epitomizes the insanity of this rush to move nuclear power into space."
"The Department of Energy, which would be responsible for fabricating all of these various nuclear devices being considered for space operations, has a long tragic record of worker and environmental contamination at their string of labs around the nation."
"Take, for example the 1997 launch of the Cassini space probe that carried 72 pounds of toxic plutonium-238 aboard," Gagnon continues. "Just prior to the launch it was reported that Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico had 244 cases of worker contamination while fabricating the plutonium generators for that mission. So, it is not just some theoretical equation- that there might be some accident upon launch. The nuclear production process is killing us before any rocket lifts off from a launch pad."
"The plan to build nuclear-powered rockets to Mars, nuclear mining colonies on the planetary bodies and ultimately nuclear-powered weapons in space all signal the dangers and lunacy of those driving this mad rush to colonize space," says Gagnon. "These space entrepreneurs and the nuclear/military industrial complex have learned nothing since the atomic bombs were exploded over the heads of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
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