Would a solar sail boat lose all acceleration outside the solar system?

Question

Assuming that a solar sail could use the solar winds to propel a craft outwards from the sun and the solar system. But once the craft is far enough away from the sun, would the winds from nearby stars prevent the craft from maintaining directional integrity (prevent from going in a straight line away from Sol)?

Answer 1

"winds from nearby stars"

What winds??? "Wind" means presence of an atmosphere -- not true in space.

"lose all acceleration" vs "maintaining directional integrity"

Those are not the same things, form your question properly.

You'll loose acceleration b/c there'll be no solar power to increse your speed. But you'll maintain direction & speed b/c there'll be no friction and thus nothing to slow you down or change where you're going.

Answer 2

It still accelerate but the acceleration would slow down.

Answer 3

The space probe will keep the orbital energy it had gathered from the solar wind while it was closer to the sun. Its speed at the heliopause will not be affected by the interstellar medium in any important way, especially if the probe closes its sails. Outside the heliopause, the solar wind will no longer affect the space probe, but an object in motion will tend to stay in motion in the same direction and at the same speed, unless acted on by forces.

Answer 4

IT WOULD PROBABLY CEASE TO ACCELERATE BUT RETAIN THE SPEED IT ALREADY HAD.

Answer 5

Yes as the energy will be inverse the square the distance.

Answer 6

The energetic wind from Sol, our star, stays at pretty much the same velocity as you leave the solar system (the planetary system of Sol) but it decreases in force because it is increasingly dissipated.  This decrease is almost the same as the inverse square law of gravitation.  The solar wind blows into an increasingly larger volume so its force is reduced.

As you get farther and farther away it would be true that the winds from other stars would interfere except that the original force you were relying on would be so feeble that it would not be wise to still be using a sail.  Ion propulsion engines would be much more effective.

Answer 7

The solar wind "blows a bubble" in the interstellar medium (the rarefied hydrogen and helium gas that permeates the galaxy). The point where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the interstellar medium is known as the heliopause, and is often considered to be the outer "border" of the solar system. The distance to the heliopause is not precisely known, and probably varies widely depending on the current velocity of the solar wind and the local density of the interstellar medium, but it is known to lie far outside the orbit of Pluto.

At this point there is a faint "interstellar wind".

Answer 8

Yes, it would lose ACCELERATION, but assuming it were travelling fast enough to escape Sol and the pilot 'took his sails in', it would continue traveling forever due to MOMENTUM - unless light years from now, it encountered something else.  I suppose the pilot could whip out the sails again and head off to the next star...

It's a theoretically possible way to go around, but the friggin' time involved is just incredible...

Answer 9

Solar sails don't surf the solar wind, they rely on radiation pressure.  The momentum of incoming photons pushes it forward, so as long as you're somewhere you can see a light source you can continue to accelerate.  We can shine a high energy laser at it from earth, if nothing else, to ensure it continues to accelerate.

They're really nifty ideas in that they don't need to carry any fuel and they can go VERY fast, but they accelerate really slowly, so it's more suited to long distance interstellar travel.

It's the holy grail of space propulsion to find something that both accelerates fast and has a high top speed.