How do solar sails work? Bill Nye explains.

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  • čas přidán 1. 08. 2019
  • Did you know there's a way for spacecraft to travel farther, faster, and maybe one day reach other stars? Bill Nye is here to teach you about the game-changing technology called solar sailing.
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    About The Planetary Society:
    The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. With the mission to empower the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration, its international membership makes the non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Planetary Society in 1980. Bill Nye, a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board, serves as CEO.
  • Věda a technologie

Komentáře • 73

  • @thejesuschrist
    @thejesuschrist Před 4 lety +41

    Science is the best thing ever!!!

  • @blakec8723
    @blakec8723 Před rokem +1

    0:21 he looks like Wall-E flying around in space with the fire extinguisher

  • @phonotical
    @phonotical Před 4 lety +2

    Didn't you upload this already?
    I'll happily travel to space with Bill Nye, either sitting along side him, or sitting on his back as he soars majestically through the sky toward the endemian moon

  • @Curionauta361
    @Curionauta361 Před 4 lety +1

    Great video, Bill! Thanks for sharing!

  • @RaysAstrophotography
    @RaysAstrophotography Před 4 lety +5

    I have been following space sail news. jAXA put to use already for asteroid missions. Funny video Bill! Good information.

  • @susanwilson9241
    @susanwilson9241 Před 4 lety +11

    I wonder if we could harness the momentum of photons here on earth to create a free energy source?

    • @sandizmeme7399
      @sandizmeme7399 Před 3 lety

      Probably not because of friction.
      But it's not impossible.

    • @knowwankeno1de1witdelongna85
      @knowwankeno1de1witdelongna85 Před 11 měsíci

      Look into plasma generating portable particle colliders. Generates plasma by fusing H3 (Helium 3), Deuterium, and Unobtainium from the Moon.
      Bless you 🙏 Namaste

    • @bagas14715
      @bagas14715 Před 9 měsíci

      Kids: can we have a solar sail, mom ?
      Mom: but we have solar sail at home
      Solar sail at home : "solar panel"

    • @susanwilson9241
      @susanwilson9241 Před 9 měsíci

      @@bagas14715 - solar panels do not harness the momentum of photons.

    • @danielt.8573
      @danielt.8573 Před 10 dny

      Closest thing we have are solar panels but even if you made something like a big vacuum tube with solar blades/sails spinning inside, it would still be an intermittent power source.

  • @tfcabral
    @tfcabral Před 7 měsíci

    You really MUST reproduce that fire extinguisher demo whilst standing on a skateboard.
    That would be *RAD!*

  • @joeyrodriguez
    @joeyrodriguez Před 4 lety

    Congratulations team again! This is history in the making.

  • @MrEnoBeano
    @MrEnoBeano Před 4 lety

    Good video Bill. Thanks.

  • @ethannf502
    @ethannf502 Před 4 lety

    This is so cool!

  • @andrewstutz4240
    @andrewstutz4240 Před 2 lety +1

    Gotta love when engineers have an idea and then the people that build it get to tell them everything they got wrong.

  • @KigurumiAlice
    @KigurumiAlice Před 2 měsíci

    A photon walks into a hotel. The desk clerk says, "Welcome to our hotel. Can we help you with your luggage?" The photon says, "No thanks, I'm traveling light."

  • @lucyboheme540
    @lucyboheme540 Před 4 lety

    Wow!!! This is so cool! Science rocks!

  • @1mremington
    @1mremington Před 4 lety +4

    Could you explain how a photon could have momentum (M x V) without mass (M)?

    • @1mremington
      @1mremington Před 4 lety

      @Aditya Radhakrishnan Thank you!

    • @h_h03
      @h_h03 Před 4 lety

      1mremington lasers dumbhed

  • @dankswtf
    @dankswtf Před 4 lety

    Cool!

  • @cristianF103B72
    @cristianF103B72 Před 4 lety +1

    I got a QUESTION: What is the exact altitude of the SolarSail 2?Cause in the mission dashboard it says the apogee is about 725 km,but the Mission Team says that the Sail had achieved 727 km on 30th July,so what happened in 3 days,I don’t guess the sail had already start to deorbit.Anyone know something more about it?

    • @wetasspaddington
      @wetasspaddington Před 4 lety +1

      I do not believe that LightSail2 will de-orbit for a while. I think what you may have been confused about is what Apogee means. The Apogee is the furthest point an object is away from earth. This does not mean that the orbit is circular. While it is extremely close in astronomical terms, I do not believe that LightSail2 is in a perfectly circular orbit. This is incredibly difficult to obtain, and only really performed precisely by geostationary satellites (SatNav etc.). It is very close though, I'll give the PS that, and LightSail is certainly an amazing mission which holds lots of promise for future human spaceflight in our solar system and beyond.

    • @cristianF103B72
      @cristianF103B72 Před 4 lety

      Dr. Santiago Ya okay,but I mean the apogee right now is around 725 km,and the Team announce that 3 days ago the Sail raised 2km up with an apogee about 727 km.My question is why the sail doesn’t reach that altitude anymore?

  • @abrahamsatinger265
    @abrahamsatinger265 Před 8 měsíci

    From MIT: a highly acclaimed educational institute produced a roll to roll graphene on copper substrate process!!! There's your graphene and energy production that you smart intelligent scholars can cut and paste together your solar sails!! A roll to roll to solar sails from MIT!

  • @R3l3ntl3sss
    @R3l3ntl3sss Před 4 lety +1

    Neat

  • @rodneycarpluk8052
    @rodneycarpluk8052 Před 4 lety

    With faster travel it would be similar to the generation ship concept...

  • @Hyun766bgcvb
    @Hyun766bgcvb Před 4 lety

    brilliant with humorous explanation....

  • @gmonorail
    @gmonorail Před 4 lety

    at perigee atmospheric drag on the sail is larger than the orbital boost at apogee from the sun? so the sail is slowly sinking back down into the atmosphere? is that true?

    • @rmkenney
      @rmkenney Před 4 lety +1

      Is there no way of raising perigee? Is it a real physical/mechanical issue with LS2 that can't be altered, or is this just a avionics
      programming issue? Rather than only rotating the sail to face-on to the sun before perigee, couldn't you also face the sail at a 45 degree
      angle on the sunward side of the orbit, thus adding to the perigee?

  • @zapfanzapfan
    @zapfanzapfan Před 4 lety +1

    Can we crowd source a Breakthrough starshot if we all go out with a laser pointer at night and point at it? ;-)

  • @jagadeeshdasari5758
    @jagadeeshdasari5758 Před rokem

    Its good idea to use the kinetic energy of the light. Afterall the momentum created by the photons on the sail is not so great I think but in space it matters to propagate. What about the gravitational forces produced by massive bodies in space? Don't they affect the solar sail? How come the momentum force of the photons overcome a gravity pull of massive bodies like jupiter?

  • @RealTylerBell
    @RealTylerBell Před 4 lety

    space is just beeping awesome

  • @AlphonseZukor
    @AlphonseZukor Před 4 lety

    I would cry too if i didn't have anymore push...MEOW!

  • @HellHammerThrash
    @HellHammerThrash Před 4 lety

    I hate to have to ask this but we've actually been able to measure detectable acceleration from sunlight in solar sailing? or is this all still theoretical?

    • @Antifrost
      @Antifrost Před 4 lety

      A few videos before this one, they've already launched a successful test so this has gone past the theoretical stage

  • @phonotical
    @phonotical Před 4 lety

    What if the craft was sent spinning around by say grazing a micro meteorite, those photons helpful for travel? Or does it spin onward forever

  • @jacksquatt6082
    @jacksquatt6082 Před rokem

    I knew it! I knew "Odin - Photon Space Sailor Starlight" would eventually become real!

  • @boldandthebeautifulgimbal2881

    Momentum equals velocity times mass. Photons have no mass so how can they have momentum??

  • @balazsherczeg749
    @balazsherczeg749 Před rokem

    How does a photon have momentum while having no mass?

  • @cozettelessor9519
    @cozettelessor9519 Před 3 lety

    Since when does bill nye dye have gray hair bahhahha

  • @IKnowYouDidnt
    @IKnowYouDidnt Před 2 lety

    Why couldn't a onboard nuclear powered laser propel a spacecraft? I mean; I can use a flashlight to spin a "sail" thats in the vacuum of a light bulb. Its a toy I have, actually a science demonstration of solar sail principle... So actually, a good deal of force can be applied with just a flashlight... Do photons produce a force when they leave a laser? Could lasers be used to propel fuel for a higher specific impulse?

  • @rodneycarpluk8052
    @rodneycarpluk8052 Před 4 lety

    It seems like making faster travel will be more work, but as soon as its made, then thing slike mining, making colonies in space( thats topic thats pretty bad too), will be able to be done much faster...everything would be much more effective...if you cut the travel to an asteroid to mine it in half, or much less, then getting the resources, transporting them to earth, refining them, making better technology to allow for better space travel, its going to be much better...

  • @rodneycarpluk8052
    @rodneycarpluk8052 Před 4 lety

    no customer will want to wait a couple years to half decade or decade to get a shipment of metal...

  • @yourboss1646
    @yourboss1646 Před 3 lety

    I don't think there enough momentum to carry a communication or power instrument of decades by solar sail

  • @wr5978
    @wr5978 Před 4 lety

    2002 Disney movie
    Treasure Planet

  • @compaqgaming5768
    @compaqgaming5768 Před 4 lety +1

    How to make that tell me 😭😭😭

    • @cianlinehan8921
      @cianlinehan8921 Před 3 lety +1

      Just get yourself a nifty sheet of tin foil and chuck into space. Bingobongo, Spaceship.

  • @Sinnbad21
    @Sinnbad21 Před 4 lety

    No more push

  • @michaelsmith2619
    @michaelsmith2619 Před rokem

    How would you protect such a flimsy looking thing from being torn up by space debris?

  • @user-gl2qj7gf8g
    @user-gl2qj7gf8g Před 4 lety

    BILL BILL BILL

  • @patrickfle9172
    @patrickfle9172 Před 4 lety +1

    Except it isn't really _new_

  • @mitchellbutler7068
    @mitchellbutler7068 Před měsícem

    Ahhhh Gravity drive ..... Now that's worth funding ...

  • @rodneycarpluk8052
    @rodneycarpluk8052 Před 4 lety

    So why is NASA and space companies waiting to make faster travel? To realistically mine asteroids, travel to asteroids will have to be less than years to decades...

  • @rodneycarpluk8052
    @rodneycarpluk8052 Před 4 lety

    Even if the solar sail can reach the star, it will take years to send a signal back to earth...if something along the lines of WARP drive was made, theres estimates of the travel to the nearest star system in a couple weeks...

  • @wetasspaddington
    @wetasspaddington Před 4 lety +2

    A great video, but the only problem I have with it is the fact that you said that the sun was an 'unlimited source of energy'. This is not true. This defies the laws of thermodynamics, the most uncontested sets of laws known, as energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transferred from one form to another, as we know. The sun *releases* energy through nuclear fusion, however does not create it. One day it will run out of hydrogen to fuse, and become a white dwarf star. Admittedly yes, this will happen in millions (if not, billions) of years, but still, it is a bit misleading.

  • @rodneycarpluk8052
    @rodneycarpluk8052 Před 4 lety

    This is nice. but...

  • @matthewkopp2391
    @matthewkopp2391 Před 2 měsíci

    Nice try, but the Bajorans already invented it.

  • @fredcatcreedy980
    @fredcatcreedy980 Před 3 lety

    What a weirdo.!

  • @h_h03
    @h_h03 Před 4 lety

    Your head is too big

    • @h_h03
      @h_h03 Před 4 lety

      Sorry

    • @leofreitasa9933
      @leofreitasa9933 Před 4 lety

      Seriously?

    • @h_h03
      @h_h03 Před 4 lety

      Leonardo Freitas I have no subscribers

    • @leofreitasa9933
      @leofreitasa9933 Před 4 lety

      @@h_h03 why should I care? You are not PewDiePie

    • @h_h03
      @h_h03 Před 4 lety

      Leonardo Freitas pewdiepie has hella subs yo