From: higgins@fnalf.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey)
Subject: Re: Solar Sail Data
Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Lines: 56
NNTP-Posting-Host: fnalf.fnal.gov

In article <1993Apr15.051746.29848@news.duc.auburn.edu>, snydefj@eng.auburn.edu (Frank J. Snyder) writes:
> I am looking for any information concerning projects involving Solar
>  Sails. [...]
> Are there any groups out there currently involved in such a project ?

Sure.  Contact the World Space Foundation.  They're listed in the sci.space
Frequently Asked Questions file, which I'll excerpt.

    WORLD SPACE FOUNDATION - has been designing and building a solar-sail
    spacecraft for longer than any similar group; many JPL employees lend
    their talents to this project. WSF also provides partial funding for the
    Palomar Sky Survey, an extremely successful search for near-Earth
    asteroids. Publishes *Foundation News* and *Foundation Astronautics
    Notebook*, each a quarterly 4-8 page newsletter. Contributing Associate,
    minimum of $15/year (but more money always welcome to support projects).

	World Space Foundation
	Post Office Box Y
	South Pasadena, California 91301

WSF put together a little paperback anthology of fiction and
nonfiction about solar sails: *Project Solar Sail*.  I think Robert
Staehle, David Brin,  or Arthur Clarke may be listed as editor.

Also there is a nontechnical book on solar sailing by Louis Friedman,
a technical one by a guy whose name escapes me (help me out, Josh),
and I would expect that Greg Matloff and Eugene Mallove have something
to say about the subject in *The Starflight Handbook*, as well as
quite a few references.


Check the following articles in *Journal of the British Interplanetary
Society*:

V36 p. 201-209 (1983)
V36 p. 483-489 (1983)
V37 p. 135-141 (1984)
V37 p. 491-494 (1984)
V38 p. 113-119 (1984)
V38 p. 133-136 (1984)

(Can you guess that Matloff visited Fermilab and gave me a bunch of
reprints? I just found the file.)

And K. Eric Drexler's paper "High Performance Solar Sails and Related
Reflecting Devices," AIAA paper 79-1418, probably in a book called
*Space Manufacturing*, maybe the proceedings of the Second (?)
Conference on Space Manufacturing.  The 1979 one, at any rate.

Submarines, flying boats, robots, talking         Bill Higgins
pictures, radio, television, bouncing radar       Fermilab
vibrations off the moon, rocket ships, and        HIGGINS@FNAL.BITNET
atom-splitting-- all in our time.  But nobody     HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV
has yet been able to figure out a music           SPAN:  43011::HIGGINS
holder for a marching piccolo player. 
                     --Meredith Willson, 1948
