Parashutes for non-atmospher bodies? (Solar Chutes?)

[ky0breck]

So I gues this is a part suggestion but I was just curious, waht would your thoughts be on it? The way I imagine them working is when you are opposite the sunlight is coming at you the chutes will open and slow you down in a non atmospher, so you can slow down on the mun and not have to use fuel to land, plus it'd be useful for getting into orbit. Just a thought

EDIT:Sorry for any bad grammar I typed this in a hurry, with out paying to much mind to grammar (such as in the title, atmosphere*)|

[Locklear308]

Well that doesn't really make sense haha.

[Tremzack]

I personally don't think this would be necessary, for its not too hard to land on the Mun, and I think it would even make it too easy

Is this even based on a real life thing?

[Tommygun]

It's basically a solar sail and would take months or years to slow down.

The Muns gravity would be too strong for it and it would just speed up again as it gets closer.

[opticalshadow]

i think what your looking for is rockets attached to long peices of strut

[rewdew2]

It's the concept of using a MASSIVE solar sail to slow down you decent,

The issue with this is that you would need to have a MASSIVE sail to make much of a difference.

Imagine this

the following is a graph of how much thrust these put out:

_____________smallest 1 meter engine:

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|____________Ion engine

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|______________Solar sail

It really won't do much of a difference against the gravity of ANY solar body.

However you can use them to get places without fuel or electric charge.

[Brotoro]

Solar parachutes for landing on airless bodies would only be a disappointing way to crash.

[Luis]

Not to mention that when the thrust from the sun is pointing in the direction you need to slow you down (upwards), the sun is on the opposite side of the planet or moon. In other words, it's night.

Ok, I suppose I did just mention it.

[wbcundiff]

wait, whats this? solar panels experience photonic pressure from Kerbol? I had no idea that KSP simulated that effect! so solar sails are possible even though they don't make good parachutes?

[RatBeer]

sorry but this is just stupid

[TheFors]

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Edited September 7, 2022 by TheFors

[Tom K.]

I think solar-sailes should be used for interstellar-travel, as it will over time get you near the speed of light...

[joppiesaus]

You need sun to slow you down, but the sun is always on the wrong side by landing.(like Luis said)

even if it wasn't, you have a 1 square km parashute, and you only go 0.1 m/s less hard.

I think it would be useless

[baarnold]

Solar chutes wouldn't work because they don't create any drag...

[Daze]

What is the physical law behind this?

[baarnold]

Dunno, just another person who hasn't read the forum rules and what not to suggest..

[Pyre]

What is the physical law behind this?

Enjoy. Needless to say, the impulse provided by a solar sail is orders of magnitude to small to use for landing, not to mention the fact that the only time it would slow you decent is when you have some pesky rock between you and the sun.

EDIT: Wow my phone hates copying and pasting URLs.

Edited May 10, 2013 by Pyre

[SecondGuessing]

Even if you could make a solar sail large enough to be able to counteract the Moon's gravity it'd still never work as it'd never 'fill'. As soon as you got close to the Moon the Sun would be to the side or above you, and thus would either push you off course or actually accelerate you slightly.

[lazarus1024]

For landing, no, never. It would be kind of neat to have them introduced to KSP at some point. I think it would be difficult to model them realistically, since the biggest ships in KSP are typically on the order of maybe 50-70m. However, that doesn't mean KSP can't cheap have something like a 100m diameter unfurled solar sail and just ramp up the thrust by a factor of 10 or something. KSP has some realism, but not a boat ton (I am looking at you Ion engine). So maybe it provides 1/10th of the thrust of an ion engine, at the same weight, but unlimited fuel, but can only thrust away from Kerbol up to perpendicular to kerbol, with reducing thrust the more you are angled toward perpendicular (this is already modeled with solar cells. As the point closer to perpendicular their power production drops towards zero).

It would be a cool future addition to the game.

[Kilmeister]

Even if you did implement this with enough thrust to even slightly influence a descent. Remember that solar wind is flowing outwards from the star. So if you were attempting to land on the daytime side it would be working against you. And if you were on the nighttime side, you would be in the wake/shadow of the orbital body. Which again would provide no assistance on a descent. Possibly detrimental there too(not familiar with the flow dynamics of solar wind and whether the orbital body would create an eddy or not).

[skykooler]

Even if you did implement this with enough thrust to even slightly influence a descent. Remember that solar wind is flowing outwards from the star. So if you were attempting to land on the daytime side it would be working against you. And if you were on the nighttime side, you would be in the wake/shadow of the orbital body. Which again would provide no assistance on a descent. Possibly detrimental there too(not familiar with the flow dynamics of solar wind and whether the orbital body would create an eddy or not).

But, if you were landing into dawn or dusk, it could help you de-orbit and save you fuel for the actual landing.

I think the only place this would actually be useful is Gilly. Low gravity, plus boatloads of sun.

[3_bit]

How about a giant pole landing leg that just pushes away topsoil on planets with nonsolid surfaces (like the moon)

[leopardenthusiast]

This would actually do more harm than good, even if the Mun was made of a material that did not affect the solar wind at all - it'd have such little effect for its weight that you'd actually be better off just using a normal engine.

[Jokurr]

Dunno, just another person who hasn't read the forum rules and what not to suggest..

What part of the rules does a thread like this go against?