RE: starship-design: Sail types

["L. Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

Kelly,

>
> Sail bosts can only do it because they use the leverage
> between the wind and
> the keel to force them forward.  NO space keel, your out of luck.
>

Not true. Because it is a spaceship and not a sailboat, it is actually
easier to sail against the wind so to speak. By using the sail to generate
thrust on a vector that kills angular (orbital) momentum, the solar sail
ship falls inward to a lower orbit, "against" the wind. It can tack, reach
and sail before the wind as well as hover, something a sail boat could never
do.

Lee