Introduction#
Even though space pirates is a cool name, it's also tempting to look into options to deserve the domain name.
Since the crew only has software guys at the moment, we would have to focus on simpler ideas that don't involve too much rocket science.
Quite a few people have had some nice success sending balloons into near space (i.e. in the stratosphere which doesn't quite so cool). Balloons do get to half of the official limit of outer space though: Karman line
Cool and successful projects#
PARIS#
The Paper aircraft released into space (near space actually): PARIS
KickSat#
Zach designed micro satellites that can be put inside a cubesat standard module and is trying to get these launched. See Kicksat. The satellites themselves are really just PCBs with some solar cells and wires as antenna at the moment but they could surely be extended if they actually work well.
Theory and documentation#
Solar sails#
Solar sails are a cool idea but they don't work until you are at least 800km from Earth.
Atmospheric calculators#
Brainstorming#
Solar sail for use in stratosphere#
The idea is to use the that that there is still some atmosphere left. The sail would need to:- absorb light on one side so that it becomes hot
- act as an insulator so that the other side is cold
- this would create a difference of temperature between the two sides and change the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere.
- the temperature difference could result in a pressure difference which would push the sail
Apparently at 50km (limits of ballon flight), the pressure is still 75 Pascal or N/m2 and temperature 270k. This means a 50k temperature difference for the air could create 15 pascal of pressure difference.
A naive interpretation would be that every square meter could lift about 1 kg of load.