
Solar sail (1980) - tosh
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4614319
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abecedarius
Drexler's master's thesis has more detail:
[https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/16234](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/16234)
and pp 7-9 of
[http://space.nss.org/media/L5-News-1979-05.pdf](http://space.nss.org/media/L5-News-1979-05.pdf)
summarize. I don't know what's been done more recently about space-built sails
(or other uses of big, light mirrors).

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greglindahl
Japan has operated a solar sail near the orbit of Venus, several countries and
companies are running experiments on using them to make satellites deorbit
faster, the Planetary Society is launching Lightsail-2 on the next Falcon
Heavy, and the Breakthrough Starshot hopes to make scifi a reality and shine a
huge laser on tiny chip-scale spaceships to send them to Alpha Centauri.

The field has been active.

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abecedarius
It's great to see progress -- I just meant I'm curious about building the
sails in space for higher performance, and haven't heard about anyone else
trying to refine those ideas.

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JoeDaDude
IANAL, but I wonder if this invention has any significance to the Planetary
Society's plan to launch a solar sail satellite in the near future, the
LightSail [1]. If I understand the patent correctly, Google has patented (a) a
means to steer a light powered craft, and (b) a means to produce solar sail. I
understand the LightSail controls the sails by changing the orientation of the
satellite with respect to the sun. I have no info on how the sail itself was
fabricated. Do they owe Google some money?

[1] [http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/lightsail-solar-
sa...](http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/lightsail-solar-sailing/)

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blakers95
This patent is from 1980--I don't think it's Google's.

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zeth___
Patents expire after 26 years. Like sane copyright laws should.

