Tasmodevil44 wrote: Hmmm …. all very interesting there, Jolly Roger. I may be wrong, but I always thought that the solar wind of charged particles also exerted pressure, same as sunlight. And that a sail could be used for either/both.
Sunlight has thousands of times more momentum than the solar wind. The thrust contribution of the solar wind on a solar sail is extremely small. The problem with a solar sail is that its size is limited by the weight of the sail material. A magnetic bubble sail does not have the same constraint, and can be expanded to the enormous size needed to catch the feeble solar wind.
