"Wind Rider" magsail propulsion

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2021/11/19/wind-rider-a-high-performance-magsail/

This sounds very interesting. Any numbers on mass or ballpark acceleration?

Depending on the specifics a lot of the "problems" could be solved by using
a Jupiter flyby. You wouldn't want to aim for Jupiter at full speed, but rather
encountering Jupiter with a low enough speed that it can sling you almost
straight for the Sun. At that point, you just turn on the drive again as you
approach the desired anti-Sunward vector.

In particular, you can aim toward the future position of Earth, to deploy a
payload of kinetic impactors to power launch from Earth (kinetic impact
powered propulsion).

Although depending on the specifics, it may not be necessary to use Jupiter
for this. You could use kinetic impact powered propulsion to directly boost
a payload into an elliptical orbit initially lagging Earth. In 3 months, the
payload is directly sunward of Earth (even though it was initially slower than
Earth, this caused the orbit to fall closer to the Sun and in the process it
speeds up and catches up). At that point, you turn on the Wind Rider drive
and it zooms anti-sunward toward Earth. Deploy the kinetic impactor drones
and it's ready to power more launch from Earth.

All this said, I'm not so enthusiastic about kinetic impact powered propulsion
for Earth launch as I once was. It involves lots of expended electronics,
whereas something like hypersonic skyhitch only consumes fluid fuels.

Anyway, Wind Rider propulsion could be really good for Postcards from Cutty
if it scales up well.

#Space #SpaceTechnology #SpaceExploration #PostcardsFromCutty