TY - GEN

T1 - National space navigation over the past two decades of the 21st century. Positive look

AU - Polyakhova, E. N.

AU - Eskin, B. B.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2019 Author(s). Copyright: Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2019/11/15

Y1 - 2019/11/15

N2 - Recently, the national scientific community celebrated the 130th anniversary of the birth of one of the pioneers of astronautics and rocket dynamics, the Moscow engineer Friedrich Zander (August 23, 1887 - March 28, 1933). In this regard, our review of the current state of national space travel projects will be an appropriate and timely tribute to the memory of the outstanding Soviet scientist. It is known that the development of an engineering design for a space flight with low-thrust of metal mirror belongs precisely to F. A. Zander. Indeed, this idea of space travel was for the first time expressed by him in 1910-1912 as one having scientific and engineering meaning, whereas earlier it appeared in only a few works of science fiction at the turn of the 19th / 20th century. The only exception is the similar statements made by Yu. V. Kondratyuk in 1918-1919 in his article "To Those Who Will Read to Build", published in those same years. Nevertheless, it was Zander who turned out to be the first to not only express the idea, substantiating its scientific reliability and technical feasibility, but also embodied it in 1924 in the design engineering project of a spacecraft with a reflecting mirror. He the presented the project in the form of two manuscripts, which, however, remained unpublished then. They would see the light of day only in 1961. Around the same time, the term "solar sail" appeared and took root as a successful borrowing from foreign science fiction. The main thing in Zander's work on space travel was the proposal to open the sail only after leaving the gravitational field. Naturally, this applied only to interplanetary flights. This concept once and for all saved the idea of sail from the attacks of the contemporaries who rightly reproached the proponents of the idea of starting with the help of light pressure directly from the surface of the Earth in the unreality of such a mission. The national history of Zander's ideas over the next hundred years is briefly described. One of the most difficult problems of mankind at the turn of the 20th / 21st century was the problem of energy supply, especially environmentally friendly. One of the reasonable ways to save energy in space is to develop renewable, "eternal" energy sources. Such promising energy resources primarily include solar energy, both thermal and mechanical. The latter involves the pressure of sunlight on the oncoming bodies in the light flux. This "eternal", and even environmentally friendly form of energy resources is also advantageous in that it generally does not require the cost of its transportation to the place of consumption. The forms of using the solar thermal energy on the Earth are widely known, but the problem of using of light flux mechanical pressure of small value for the purposes of the so-called "space travel" turns out to be much more complicated. Space travel under the solar sail is just the real embodiment of the idea of complete or partial replacing of the jet engines' enegry with the "costless" energy of the sun's rays, the pressure of which on the mirror reflecting sail can create small but quite tangible thrust force in space. With the help of the solar sail, gravity maneuvers can be performed near large planets. The idea of using the solar sail as a march thruster corresponds to the historically important ideas of F. A. Zander about flying into space under the influence of light pressure and makes a feasible contribution to the development of the scientific heritage of the scientist.

AB - Recently, the national scientific community celebrated the 130th anniversary of the birth of one of the pioneers of astronautics and rocket dynamics, the Moscow engineer Friedrich Zander (August 23, 1887 - March 28, 1933). In this regard, our review of the current state of national space travel projects will be an appropriate and timely tribute to the memory of the outstanding Soviet scientist. It is known that the development of an engineering design for a space flight with low-thrust of metal mirror belongs precisely to F. A. Zander. Indeed, this idea of space travel was for the first time expressed by him in 1910-1912 as one having scientific and engineering meaning, whereas earlier it appeared in only a few works of science fiction at the turn of the 19th / 20th century. The only exception is the similar statements made by Yu. V. Kondratyuk in 1918-1919 in his article "To Those Who Will Read to Build", published in those same years. Nevertheless, it was Zander who turned out to be the first to not only express the idea, substantiating its scientific reliability and technical feasibility, but also embodied it in 1924 in the design engineering project of a spacecraft with a reflecting mirror. He the presented the project in the form of two manuscripts, which, however, remained unpublished then. They would see the light of day only in 1961. Around the same time, the term "solar sail" appeared and took root as a successful borrowing from foreign science fiction. The main thing in Zander's work on space travel was the proposal to open the sail only after leaving the gravitational field. Naturally, this applied only to interplanetary flights. This concept once and for all saved the idea of sail from the attacks of the contemporaries who rightly reproached the proponents of the idea of starting with the help of light pressure directly from the surface of the Earth in the unreality of such a mission. The national history of Zander's ideas over the next hundred years is briefly described. One of the most difficult problems of mankind at the turn of the 20th / 21st century was the problem of energy supply, especially environmentally friendly. One of the reasonable ways to save energy in space is to develop renewable, "eternal" energy sources. Such promising energy resources primarily include solar energy, both thermal and mechanical. The latter involves the pressure of sunlight on the oncoming bodies in the light flux. This "eternal", and even environmentally friendly form of energy resources is also advantageous in that it generally does not require the cost of its transportation to the place of consumption. The forms of using the solar thermal energy on the Earth are widely known, but the problem of using of light flux mechanical pressure of small value for the purposes of the so-called "space travel" turns out to be much more complicated. Space travel under the solar sail is just the real embodiment of the idea of complete or partial replacing of the jet engines' enegry with the "costless" energy of the sun's rays, the pressure of which on the mirror reflecting sail can create small but quite tangible thrust force in space. With the help of the solar sail, gravity maneuvers can be performed near large planets. The idea of using the solar sail as a march thruster corresponds to the historically important ideas of F. A. Zander about flying into space under the influence of light pressure and makes a feasible contribution to the development of the scientific heritage of the scientist.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85076034825&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1063/1.5133166

DO - 10.1063/1.5133166

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:85076034825

T3 - AIP Conference Proceedings

BT - XLIII Academic Space Conference

A2 - Mikrin, Evgeny A.

A2 - Rogozin, Dmitry O.

A2 - Aleksandrov, Anatoly A.

A2 - Sadovnichy, Victor A.

A2 - Fedorov, Igor B.

A2 - Mayorova, Vera I.

PB - American Institute of Physics

T2 - 43rd Academic Space Conference: Dedicated to the Memory of Academician S.P. Korolev and Other Outstanding Russian Scientists - Pioneers of Space Exploration "Korolev Academic Space Conference"

Y2 - 28 January 2019 through 1 February 2019

ER -