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LightSail to launch on a Falcon Heavy

The Planetary Society announced today that its solar sail experiment, LightSail, will be launched in 2016 on a Falcon Heavy.

It will be a secondary payload on what might be one of Falcon Heavy’s early demo flights. They also say the launch date is scheduled for April 2016, but since the rocket has not yet been tested I wouldn’t take that date too seriously.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

One comment

  • Pzatchok

    I like the idea of the light sail but find it a bit limited.

    For one it can only move away from a star or light source. Yet it can be steered by turning the sail but it can never ‘tack’ into the solar wind. It can only tack away.

    And once it leaves the area of the light source it looses all power.

    A nice no mass way to leave the solar system since you can just dump it off when its thrust is no longer enough.

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