Sailing to Mars with an E-Sail

Think about jetting off to another planet sometime in the future and the rocket with its propellent is the most common image in the mind of any science fiction fan. Perhaps that is why when you are asked to consider a propellent less E-Sail the imagination is left grasping at straws. So what is this new technology and just how viable is it?

“The E-sail utilizes long, charged tethers to convert natural solar wind momentum flux into spacecraft thrust.” Yes, that is just like a sail boat on the ocean back on Earth. There is no fuel involved, its all solar wind powered by a technology that was invented in Finland in 2006.

Finnish Meteorological Institute researchers hope that the technology will be able to make manned flights to Mars a possibility. Here’s what the official line is, “Electric solar wind sail facilitated Manned Mars Initiative (EMMI) makes continuous bidirectional manned Mars flights possible by utilising water mined from the asteroids. In the heart of this scheme is the electric solar wind sail which provides propellantless transportation within the solar system, thus enabling economical asteroid mining.”

Just how viable this E-sail is likely to be in interplanetary distances is a fact that is yet to be tested by this science project.