is it possible to make an entirely solar powered ship?

[Clockwork13]

is it possible to make an entirely solar powered ship that could fly forever as long as it has enough electric charge?

[g.koster]

yes. every satelite is like that. theoritically you don't nee electricity either. But is you want propulsion then in game no. This because of a gentle man called newton.

[Clockwork13]

yes. every satelite is like that. theoritically you don't nee electricity either. But is you want propulsion then in game no. This because of a gentle man called newton.

Yeah, I was talking about propulsion

[Gaarst]

There's got to be a solar sail mod somewhere

[CalculusWarrior]

Theoretically, no. As every engine in the game requires some sort of non-light fuel, one must stop to refuel their craft eventually.

However, in practice this may be possible. If a craft carried drills and mining equipment which was all solar-powered, it could potentially travel forever, as long as it made use of planets, moons, and asteroids along its way to refuel.

[vicwarrior]

The closer you are going to get is using ion thrusters, but they still consume small amounts of xenon, which means you can't have infinite deltaV , but they are still pretty damn efficient nonentheless.

[n0xiety]

Solar sails are an even worse propulsion system then ion engines right now. You need like 800m to 800m sail for generating 5newton thrust... Now you need to subtract the sails own weight and think about the craft weight so minute long burn with liquid engines or day long burn with ion engine just might become month long burns with solar sail.

[SanderB]

a solar sail is limited with the directions in which it can sail as the sun shines from only 1 direction at any given time and thrust can only be captured by going in any direction away from the sun. You'll be having to use very meticulous maneuvers to use gravity assists in order to get places where you cant go because you cant thrust toward the sun with a solar sail.

[Shpaget]

Solar sails are an even worse propulsion system then ion engines right now. You need like 800m to 800m sail for generating 5newton thrust... Now you need to subtract the sails own weight and think about the craft weight so minute long burn with liquid engines or day long burn with ion engine just might become month long burns with solar sail..

Actually, that's not that bad.

Current ion thrusters produce a few tens on milinewtons and require lots of power. For example, Dawn thrusters produce about 90 mN each (they are fired one at a time). Dawn carries 10kW of solar panels.

[jarmund]

There's got to be a solar sail mod somewhere

Interstellar has a solar sail.

[n0xiety]

Ah i can understand why my post was confusing. I was talking about the ingame ion engine which is overpowered yet still talking about real life solar sails at the same time. Well they both are bad for manned ships in real life unless someone perfects cryosleep. It is always possible to give the game an op solar sail that doesn't really take as much space and mass as it would in real life and create more thrust.