The Laser Sail: Visualisation · Signals from the Periphery

← Intro 中文

v / c

0.000 c

Distance

0 km

Load

0 g

λ at sail

1.06 µm

Phase

ARMED

Mode

…

Breakthrough Starshot · 2016
a 100 GW laser, a 4 m sail, a 3.6 g starship
announced by Milner & Hawking · April 2016
five minutes of thrust at ~17,000 g
then twenty years of silence → Proxima b
the beam is drawn red: 1.06 µm is invisible
photon pressure has flown; the array has not

Component

…

The Engineering Board

subsystem ⇄ how real · live

Photon pressure flies: IKAROS 2010, LightSail 2 2019

sunlight-pushed sails, in orbit, measured

FLOWN

The sail equation · thrust × (1−β)/(1+β) · spot ∝ L

exact relativity + diffraction, integrated live here

PHYSICS

A 100 GW phased array · km-scale · nanoradian aim

largest coherent arrays today: laboratory scale

DESIGN

A gram-class starship: camera, power, laser, brain

Sprite wafers reached orbit 2017 · rest is roadmap

DESIGN

Surviving 20 years of interstellar dust at 0.2c

edge-on cruise + erosion budgets · unproven

OPEN

A watt-class laser heard across 4.2 light-years

needs the same array, reversed, as the receiver

OPEN

View

Preset

DESIGN · Starshot 2016 baseline · 0.2c

The beamer & the ship

Laser powerDESIGN100 GW

a hundred power stations, coherent, for minutes; today's largest coherent arrays are lab-scale

Sail diameterDESIGN4.1 m

bigger catches the beam longer but weighs more; the baseline is four metres of near-nothing

All-up massDESIGN3.6 g

sail + chip together. Drag it to 100 kg and watch the stars recede; mass is the whole argument

Array diameterDESIGN4.50 km

sets diffraction: spot ∝ λL/D, so the array's size decides where the beam lets go

Display

Relativistic star view · aberration + Doppler

Diffraction spill past the sail

Distance markers

Mission readout · live, from your sliders

Cruise speed

…

In km/s

…

Proxima ETA

…

Peak load

…

Beam lets go at

…

λ at cruise

…

Thrust at pad

…

Chip's KE

…

What has flown vs what is design

Flown: photon pressure itself: IKAROS sailed on sunlight in 2010, LightSail 2 raised its orbit in 2019, and gram-scale Sprite spacecraft reached orbit in 2017. Physics: the relativistic sail equation, the Doppler tax and the diffraction limit, integrated exactly in this instrument. Design: the 100 GW phased array, the metre-scale dielectric sail and the gram-class starship: costed on paper, built nowhere. Open: dust survival at 0.2c and the 4-light-year data link home.

Where this drawing takes liberties

Two, both deliberate. The 1.06 µm beam is drawn red: infrared is invisible, and an honest render would show nothing at all. Time is compressed: the burn's minutes and the cruise's decades run in seconds, with the live compression factor always in the hint. The spot-to-sail ratio, the trajectory, every readout and both curves are computed exactly from your sliders; the sail's shape and spin are Starshot's published concept, not engineering drawings.

…1 / 8

…

drag = orbit · scroll = zoom · click a label · press LAUNCH to fire the beamer