NASA is giving serious consideration to the concept of solar sailing. A solar sailcraft uses a large, low mass sail and the energy and momentum of sunlight for propulsion. (a) Should the sail be absorbing or reflective? Why?
(b) How large a sail is necessary to propel a 10000kg
spacecraft against the gravitational force of the sun? Express your result in square kilometers.
(c) Explain why your answer to part (b) is independent of the distance from the sun.
The gravitational constant is G=6.67×10−11m3⋅s−2⋅kg−1.
The mass of the sun is Ms=1.99×1030kg.

The complete question is

NASA is giving serious consideration to the concept of solar sailing. A solar sailcraft uses a large, low-mass sail and the energy and momentum of sunlight for propulsion. (a) Should the sail be absorbing or reflective? Why? (b) The total power output of the sun is 3.9 x 10^26  W. How large a sail is necessary to propel a 10,000-kg spacecraft against the gravitational force of the sun? Express your result in square kilometers. (c) Explain why your answer to part (b) is independent of the distance from the sun.

a) The sail should be reflective because, an incident electromagnetic wave, in this case, light wave, impacts twice the energy density on a reflective sail, and hence twice the force on a totally reflective sail as would be impacted on a sail that is totally absorbing.

For totally reflective, F = (2I/c)A    ....1

for totally reflective, F = (I/c)A       ....2

where I is the intensity of the light

c is the speed of light = 3 x 10^8 m/s

A is the area the sail

b) The intensity of the light from the sun = power/area

==> I =

where r is the distance from the sun and the sail

The Force from the sail from equation 1  is therefore

= =

gravitational force between the sail and the sun =

where

G is the gravitational constant = 6.67 x 10^−11 m^3⋅s−2⋅kg−1.

m is the mass of the sail = 10000 kg

M is the mass of the sun = 1.99 x 10^30 kg.

==> = =

Equating the forces, we have

 =  

the distance cancels out

A = (1.33 x 10^24)/(2.069 x 10^17) = 6428226.196 m^2

==> 6428.2 km^2

c) The force of the solar radiation is proportional to the intensity of the sun from the light, and the intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. Also, the force of gravitation  is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, so they both cancel out.

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