Solar Thruster Sailor (STS) - Post, site usage, author, vision -

- Đ Frank Ellinghaus -

I N D E X - G E R M A N

POST & AUTHOR & Vision
STS - Solar Thruster Sailor
RSS - Ring Segment System LTH - Launcher Transport Head Roller-Reefing RSC - Rotational Slingshot Catapult
L I N K S ENGLISH

site usage - post - author - data safety?    vision   



How To Use This Site?

The Yellow Link Bars on the top of each page get you to the main pages of this site. The NOT Coloured Link Bars underneath the top yellow link bars get you to the main subjects of each page you are just on.

From the Index Page you can reach all main subjects of every page of this site directly. Updates and new text is marked in red colour. You will see the last update and which subjects were updated on the index page too. Itīs a good idea to look for new development here, using the index page as a switching and entry point. The content of the English and the German pages is not always exactly the same. I am not getting along updating them simultanly.



Post

Some nice guys think, they should send me *exe-, *bat-, *pif-files per email without asking. Therefore I decided to change my email address from time to time and make automatic address reading a bit harder. So it is also harder for you, if you want to send me an email. You have to cut out the red part of the address, when you write or paste it. Please donīt store it in your mail-program since it will be changed again. Donīt send emails other than in text-format, I donīt read them, not even html.

This is the address you can reach me now: rd@solar-pleasecutoutthere-thruster-sailor.info
As long as I am willing to provide an email-address at all, you will find it here.

Dear reader, despite all those above up-piled obstacles I would be happy, to read your email, as long it is positive feedback or constructive criticism.



The Author

In the mailing list
Small Boats Boatdesign I did hear about the existence of long existing concepts about solar sailing for the first time. The idea to move in space without using fuel like a sailboat with the help of sunbeams with very high speeds couldnīt get out of my head. With the time my parenthetical thoughts became an obsession. This led me to work wholeheartedly on a design of a solar sail.

From the beginning I preferred a solar sail craft with a second driving force besides photonic thrust, which could provide steerage and the possibility to move were the solar sail canīt.

State of the art are ion thrusters. They could be fabricated pretty small and light and contrary to chemical thrusters can fire with high speeds, (about 30 km/sec.)

But even that light this thrusters could be made, didnīt the use of thrusters with the additional fuel add too much weight to the solar sail? After all I wanted to design a craft light like a butterfly!

I found the answer as I realized that weight is surely important, but even more important is the size. It was important to get a construction of high solidness when building something really big and this is in my opinion best possible with a frame around. So an outer ring from pipes (but lightweight) was my choice to reach this goal.

The frame is also bracket for the thrusters. Two of them located opposite each other fired in opposite directions move a very long lever as bigger the craft is. When You compare the lever of an self employing square sail with a steering thruster unit mounted on a short boom with the lever of a large STS with a radius of say 1000 m you get the picture. I guess it is more complicated to fine tune the STS-Thrusters than to give them enough power to turn the ring.

Under current assumptions (Solar Sailing, Colin R. McInnes, Springer page 22) the biggest possible square sail with an area of 2 km x 2 km and a mass of 19200 kg could handle a payload of 32000 kg.

Therefore besides asking, how we could fabricate parts as light as possible we should also ask how can we get the craft as big as possible. For this I found the answer. You can also find the answer on transporting and mounting this in space on my web site.

The solutions are the Ring Skeleton Structure (RSS), a Spacecraft Building System, able to build large space ring structures of pipe segments in a fast and simple way and the Launcher Transport Head (LTH) a head for the launcher tip similar to the ASAP ring for the Ariane V rocket which makes it possible to transport the pipe-segments into space outside of the launcher - (were they are needed when mounted).

Those large structures would be the ideal To get some benefit (maybe) out of my work I decided to ask for patents in Germany before publishing my thoughts onto the Internet. The German "Patentamt" is now working on my applications. I didnīt ask for patents in other countries.



Data Safety?

I donīt use cookies, scripts, plug ins and other techniques which are are prone to identify your identity without your consent or put the security of your computer at risk. I donīt have influence on my provider
all-inkl.com who should have his own privacy rules. But on this site you can let your java, javascript, vb-script switched off. You donīt need it.



Vision

Every revolutionary :-) discovery should be accompanied of a vision as positive as possible. I would like to deliver this also... With the next update of this site. Promised!

I N D E X - G E R M A N

POST & AUTHOR & Vision
STS - Solar Thruster Sailor
RSS - Ring Segment System LTH - Launcher Transport Head Roller-Reefing RSC - Rotational Slingshot Catapult
L I N K S ENGLISH