“I must down to the seas again…

…to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by”

So goes the famous poem by John Masefield, only now, if all goes well, you might be able to power you ship by a star as well.

Anyway, here’s the article from The Moscow Times: Sometimes my species just impresses the hell out of me.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005.

Solar Sail Vehicle to Attempt First Controlled Space Flight
The Associated Press

A solar sail vehicle designed to be propelled by the pressure of sunlight was to be launched into space from a Russian submarine Tuesday as part of a joint Russian-U.S project attempting the first controlled flight of a solar sail, Federal Space Agency officials said.

A Volna booster rocket was to launch the unmanned spacecraft from a submerged submarine in the Barents Sea at 11:46 p.m., said Konstantin Kreidenko, an agency spokesman. The aim is for solar energy to push a giant, reflecting sail through space the way wind propels sailboats across water.

...

Kreidenko said the Solar Sail was expected to separate from the booster at 12:29 a.m. Wednesday. Once the Solar Sail reaches orbit, inflatable tubes will stretch the sail material out and hold it rigid in eight 15.1-meter-long structures resembling the blades of a windmill.

Each blade can be turned to reflect sunlight so that the craft can "tack" much like a sailboat in the wind.

In 1999, Russia attempted a similar experiment with a sun-reflecting device, but the deployment mechanism jammed and the device burned up in the atmosphere. In 2001, Russia launched another such experiment, but the device failed to separate from the booster.

The $4 million project involves the Lavochkin Research Association and is financed by the U.S. Planetary Society.

Thing is, if we can get this right, it’s a free ride around the solar neighborhood, or potentially to the next town over.

Of course it would be one amaaaazingly long commute, so we’d need to pack another pair of socks, and maybe some extra porn.

But it would all be powered by the solar wind, which is all but limitless and virtually free. And don’t let a slow start out of the gate fool you: the game is all about building up acceleration over time and distance. With a Solar Sail, although we would start off as slow and ponderous as George Bush trying to master new vocabulary, but by the time we left the solar system we’d be moving like a bat outta hell.

See, this is why writing Science Fiction keeps getting harder and harder, and why I don’t think I would trade living now for a life at almost any other place or time.

To see Michelangelo sink his chisel for the first time into the virgin marble that would become the “Pieta”, yes, that would be a helluva thing, or to learn enough Aramaic to have a beer with the Carpenter’s Kid and find out what he actually thought and what he actually said. To be with Darwin on the Beagle...or sit and listen to the Roman Senate debate.

Everybody has their list but at no time before this time could I have looked at video shot on the Martian surface, or see holiday pix of the “sheepdog” mini-moons that keep some of Saturn’s rings twined and tangled like a million-opal necklace.

The next hundred years will shape the next thousand...and You Are There, so how cool is that?

Not the worst blessing to rosary though your fingertips next time you’re stuck behind some idjit in traffic.