FAQ.txt

	SailAway 
	Frequently Asked Questions

	Last modified 2000/02/03




What is SailAway?

SailAway is a solar sail structure and flight simulator.  It is designed to 
give special care to the contribution of the radiation force pressure as a
perturber of a sail's orbit.


Hasn't someone else written a solar sail simulator?

Probably.  The study done at JPL in 1977 went far enough to simulate their
designs under flight conditions.  If anyone knows where to find the code
created for that effort, let the SailAway team know.  Until then, we face
the typical problem of previous sail teams trying to find work from
earlier projects and avoid re-inventing the wheel.  When past sail efforts
shutdown, their work dies with them or gets very hard to find.  By using
the GNU Pulblic License and the Open Source approach for our work, we hope
our work survives us even if we all burn out and pursue other work.


Why build a solar sail simulator?

Try reading through the academic literature on the subject.  A casual 
reader might think lots of good, detailed work is being done.  A more 
knowledgable reader, though, will realize that many of the authors are
hampered by a similar problem.  While some researchers are producing 
good and original work, others are writing about simplified sail problems
due to a lack of a tool to tackle the more realistic problem.  The lack
of a good simulation tool is holding some in the academic community back.
Without valuable academic research, the commercial opportunities 
sails could provide as shipping fleets to venturesome entrepeneurs will
not come about in our lifetimes.  A good simulation tool will help to 
some degree by breaking the stagnation our team perceives.