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Dreams Are Maps: Planetary Society to sail in Space next year
Dec 13, 2004 18: 28 EST
Previously published Nov 23, 2004 09: 44 EST
The Planetary Society was founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman. Carl Sagan is a favorite here at ExWeb - we even named our software Contact for a movie inspired by his novel!
The Scientist could like no other capture the imagination of millions and explain difficult concepts in understandable terms. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Dr. Sagan was the author of many bestsellers, including Cosmos, which became the best-selling science book ever published in the English language. Sagan died December 20, 1996, but his society continues his legacy.
The largest space-interest organization on Earth
The Planetary Society is a non-profit, non-governmental membership organization that supports and advocates exploration of the solar system and the search for extraterrestrial life.
With 100,000 members in more than 140 countries, the Planetary Society is the largest space-interest organization on Earth. They support various projects and the website is a wealth of news on Space.
The Space Sail
One of their most thrilling projects right now, is the solar sail Cosmos 1, set to launch March 1, 2005! The Society describes it:
A solar sail is a spacecraft without an engine - it is pushed along directly by light particles from the Sun, reflecting off giant mirror-like sails. Because it carries no fuel and keeps accelerating over almost unlimited distances, it is the only technology now in existence that can one day take us to the stars.
Launched from a submerged Russian submarine
Cosmos 1 has 8 triangular sails, each 15 meters (50 feet) in length, configured around the spacecraft's body at the center. The sails will be deployed by inflatable tubes once the spacecraft is in orbit.
The spacecraft will be launched from a submerged Russian submarine in the Barents Sea. It will be carried into orbit on board a Volna rocket - a converted ICBM left over from the old Soviet arsenal.
Interplanetary travel
Cosmos 1 will orbit the Earth at an altitude of over 800 kilometers. It will gradually raise its orbit by solar sailing -- the pressure of light particles from the Sun upon its luminous sails.
The Spacecraft is being built in Russia by NPO Lavochkin under contract to The Planetary Society. Cosmos Studios is the project's sole sponsor.
The mission will demonstrate the feasibility of Solar Sail flight, opening the way to interplanetary travel and someday - sailing to the stars. Cosmos 1 will be the first Space mission ever flown by a non-governmental advocacy group!
Cartographers of human purpose
Carl Sagan would have been thrilled! In an essay he wrote about the importance of visions as they shape the future. "Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps. Where are the dreams that motivate and inspire? Our children long for realistic maps of a future they (and we) can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?
We have always been explorers. It is part of our nature.There are now humans on every continent--from pole to pole, from Mount Everest to the Dead Sea--on the ocean bottoms and in residence 200 miles up in the sky.
At just the time when Earth has become almost entirely explored, other worlds beckon. If we manage to avoid self-destruction, so that there are future historians, our time will be remembered in part because this was when we first set sail for other worlds."
Carl Sagan was American but didn't mind international competition: "I hadn't imagined that the Soviets would beat the United States to Earth orbit, and I was startled by the large payload (which, US commentators claimed, must have been reported with a misplaced decimal point). Here the satellite was, beeping away, effortlessly circling the Earth every 90 minutes, and my heart soared--because it meant that we would be going to the planets in my lifetime."
Today, the Planetary Society supports projects from the entire world.
Image compiled by ExplorersWeb, solar sail Copyright by www.alltra.de.
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