Sailing the Galaxy: The Future of Space Travel

Rockets are unbelievably strong; they can send you up into orbit, send you to the moon and soon enough, on to Mars. Beyond that, well, it is going to involve something else-solar sails. How exactly would sails work in space? How long would it take for you to ride sailboats to the edge of the solar system? And why could this lonely expedition be the last to end with your torturous death? This is What If, so, here is what would happen if solar wind propelled you across the galaxy.

To make something fly, the launch of the spacecraft would demand a rocket thrusting the object skywards: that push is called thrust. The launch from the surface of the Earth on rocket power gives most of the spacecraft its speed. For anything more, an additional amount of fuel would be required, practically to change the speed or trajectory of the craft. Yet there doesn't exist outside these distant reaches in space any gas stations wherein to refuel-the implication being, therefore, that these variables would hold constraining any journey as far as its fuel would take it. As you can surmise, more fuel means more weight, and that gives you a limited space. Therefore, interstellar travel with rockets is a herculean task at best. But all that might soon change.

All aboard! Off we go for a sail across the galaxy. Should anything break down in the great expanse of space, it is on you to fix it. Yet, back here on Earth, we do not have that choice; not by choice, but because some major manufacturers do not want us fixing their products. This allows companies to lock out the market and limit consumer choices. That is how they quietly monopolize. Such market stranglehold puts small repair shops out of business since they cannot compete without the tools to do so. Currently, there are more than two dozen state legislatures drafting laws to protect Right to Repair and make these monopolistic practices illegal. Give credit where it's due: Apple has taken a step away from the platform; however, they still keep a degree of proprietary control, while some companies just don't care. So, tell your lawmakers to get up and fight for consumer rights so that you can take back control of what belongs to you. After all, you paid for it.

Now let's get back to the video. Down on Earth, sails have been moving boats around for centuries. They do it fuel-free, on the powers of wind. But out in space, there are none of those air molecules floating around, so you would need to harness another kind of wind. The solar wind carries charged particles ejected from the Sun. At that incredible speed, those particles are dashing through the solar system, traveling at about 1.6 million kilometers an hour. But that momentum may just get you across the solar system and into the universe with the help of a specific kind of sail. No, those special sails would not resemble your regular everyday sails.

Are you ready to have your mind blown? This is the contraption by which you could make your way across the Milky Way. It is called electric sails, or e-sails. It's kind of like an umbrella without any fabric. Only these ribs would be made of electrically charged aluminum wires, and they could be as long as 20 kilometers while also being no thicker than about half of one strand of hair upon your head. Then you could sail across the deep dark sea of outer space with nothing else required but the solar wind. Wait, wait, wait, wait...there is one catch. You see, to get you into space they will still need chemical rockets. The reason is that electric sails do not function in the Earth's magnetosphere. The magnetosphere is the area around the planet influenced by its magnetic field. At about 10 times the size of Earth itself, you would need a little help from the old-school rockets to get out of there. I suppose you could build a spaceport around Earth. It would have to be some distance out so that it wouldn't fall under the influence of the planet's magnetic field. But that route would run awfully high on the cost scale and take, like, forever to build. And we want to send you on this trip now.

Setting light-load sailing from Earth should go free from the dominion of the magnetosphere. From there, the sailing would be really smooth. In the case of a 1,000 kilogram spacecraft like yours, you would have some 100 wires to catch solar wind particles. You become a pioneering voyager of this amazing new tech in space. After sailing for about a year, you'd find yourself accelerating at the rate of speed equal to or greater than 30 kilometers/second. You might even achieve something on the order of 150 kilometers per second. Yeah, that's a serious velocity—speaking in fact, one faster than Voyager 1, the fastest spacecraft ever launched by humans. Voyager 1 is now going through space at a speed of something like 17 kilometers per second. It is after three years past Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus that you would be present beyond Neptune's orbit.

You would be navigating by varying the voltage on the separate wires of your electric sail. Well, you'd still have to be a navigational genius to sail under safety conditions, particularly as you got closer to the outer extremes of the solar system. Here, you'd move through the Kuiper Belt; this area is a home to icy comets, and if you don't watch out, these comets will severely zap your electric sails. Your interstellar adventure could be cut short before it even leaves our planetary neighborhood. Beyond that, it's still a really long way to go to the very edge of the solar system: heliopause. Now, that is, four times further than Neptune from the Sun. Strap yourselves in and shove forward for a pretty uneventful view for the next 10 years. I know, I know—right now you'd prefer a window view of Jupiter or Uranus. But hey, it's about time to explore some worlds that you have never seen.

Oh god, I just remembered: I was going to tell you something important. Do you remember that your electric sails sail under the solar wind? Well, uh, right now you are the furthest away from the Sun that you have ever been, so there won't be solar particles firing your ship along. Your sailing may just stop altogether and leave you stuck forever at the fringes of the solar system: cold, lonely, hopeless. Yeah, I'm not going to put it lightly; this could be how your days come to an end. A dependency on your current mode of propulsion might have ensured there was no going back or caring to call someone for help.

While you still have a little bit of life left in your sails, you're going to have to make tracks towards another star. In my opinion, I'd go for the Alpha Centauri star system. It is the closest one around, and it's interesting because here there are not one but three stars. Now, you should know that not all of these stars will be equal in terms of providing you the powerful solar winds that you so badly need. By passing a red dwarf like that of Alpha Centauri C, or Proxima Centauri, you happen to see luminosities ranging anywhere from one-tenth to one ten-thousandth as the strength of our own. So, that too gives some acceleration power for reaching super-high speeds again.

And all this with no chemical fuel. Yes, going green is the new thing today. You know, out here, you are travelling further into space than any human has dared to enter; now you can probably see what else lies in the beyond, just like some planets scientists have discovered that might even be better alive than Earth. If the future explores perfect electric sail technology, their visits to exoplanets around other star systems will be impossible but much faster than we ever thought possible.