Solar Sail - in Science Fiction

In Science Fiction

The earliest reference to solar sailing was in Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, coming only a year after Maxwell's equations were published. The next known publication came more than 20 years later when Georges Le Faure and Henri De Graffigny published a four-volume science fiction novel in 1889, The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist, which included a spacecraft propelled by solar pressure. B. Krasnogorskii published On the Waves of the Ether in 1913. In his story backed by technical calculations, a small, bullet-shaped capsule is surrounded by a circular mirror 35 meters in diameter. It travels through space by means of solar pressure on the mirror.

One of the earliest American stories about light sails is "The Lady Who Sailed the Soul" by Cordwainer Smith, which was published in 1960. In it, a tragedy results from the slowness of interstellar travel by this method. Another example is the 1962 story "Gateway to Strangeness" (also known as "Sail 25") by Jack Vance, in which the outward direction of propulsion poses a life-threatening dilemma. Also in early 20th century literature, Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes starts with a couple floating in space on a ship propelled and maneuvered by light sails. In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye, a sail is used as a brake and a weapon. Author and scientist Arthur C. Clarke depicted a "yacht race" between solar sail spacecraft in the 1964 short story "Sunjammer". In "Flight of the Dragonfly", Robert Forward (who also proposed the microwave-pushed Starwisp design) described an interstellar journey using a light driven propulsion system, wherein a part of the sail was broken off and used as a reflector to slow the main spacecraft as it approached its destination. In the 1982 film Tron, a "Solar Sailer" was an inner spacecraft with butterfly like sails moved along focused beam of light. In the episode "Explorers" of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that aired in 1995, a "light ship" was featured. It was designed to use solar wind to fly out of a solar system with no engine. In the film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones one is used by Count Dooku to propel himself across space. A solar sail was also used in James Cameron's Avatar. In the Disney film Treasure Planet, solar sails are used literally as sails for interstellar travel of a steampunk-styled masted sailing ship capable of traveling through space.