08 Nov '19 01:14>2 edits
Robert Forward, RIP, died in 2002 age 70.
One of his ideas he patented was about the possibility of a satellite about 1 million miles above the north or south pole, held in place permanently by solar sails, no fuel needed, and it could monitor half the world in one go, from the north pole, see anything launched by Russia or China or Korea and get that information back to Earth in 10 seconds or so.
It would not be too useful as a cell phone relay because of the 5 second or so delay of RF going the speed of light, and twice that for round trip but for a weather sat or military monitor, 5 second delay would mean nothing.
I thought it was a really clever idea.
He wrote 11 sci fi books and published over 200 science papers. A really smart dude.
This piece is from New Scientist, CA 1991:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12917594-000-science-polar-satellite-could-revolutionisecommunications/
Crunching the numbers, at an altitude of 1 million miles the gravitational attraction of Earth would be about 1/62000ths of surface gravity, about 150 MICRONS/sec^2 acceleration or less so it wouldn't need a whole lot of solar sail thrust to keep it in a stable 'orbit'.
One of his ideas he patented was about the possibility of a satellite about 1 million miles above the north or south pole, held in place permanently by solar sails, no fuel needed, and it could monitor half the world in one go, from the north pole, see anything launched by Russia or China or Korea and get that information back to Earth in 10 seconds or so.
It would not be too useful as a cell phone relay because of the 5 second or so delay of RF going the speed of light, and twice that for round trip but for a weather sat or military monitor, 5 second delay would mean nothing.
I thought it was a really clever idea.
He wrote 11 sci fi books and published over 200 science papers. A really smart dude.
This piece is from New Scientist, CA 1991:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12917594-000-science-polar-satellite-could-revolutionisecommunications/
Crunching the numbers, at an altitude of 1 million miles the gravitational attraction of Earth would be about 1/62000ths of surface gravity, about 150 MICRONS/sec^2 acceleration or less so it wouldn't need a whole lot of solar sail thrust to keep it in a stable 'orbit'.