Solar sails

"The first part of this book describes our heritage of exploration in water-borne sailing ships, then moves quickly into the details of space-vehicle propulsion. Space sailing, the authors point out, is "free," meaning it overcomes the problems inherent in having to carry along heavy, costly, and often dangerous propellants. Also discussed are advanced space-vehicle propulsion systems, such as nuclear, solar-electric, nuclear-electric and antimatter rockets. The second part of the book describes various sail systems using either sunlight or the "solar wind." Laser and microwave systems are…