Word: sailing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...English merchant Robert Thorne first proposed the idea in 1527: sail from Western Europe across the top of the continent to the Far East. This northern passage would be far quicker than the one then used, around the southern tip of Africa. But few sailors dared risk the Arctic Ocean's freezing temperatures, ice-clogged seas and blinding fog. Now, though, Thorne's idea is being taken more seriously, owing to global warming. The sea ice along the northern coast of Siberia is retreating, and last year a team of international scientists reported that ice-free routes have emerged during...
Your article on plans for a solar-sail vehicle, the world's first spacecraft to fly powered by direct solar radiation [SCIENCE, March 5], noted that the idea goes back many years but failed to mention the contribution of science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Back in 1964, he published a short story about an international race to the moon via "sun yacht." In The Wind from the Sun, Clarke detailed the competitors' various sail designs and their resultant difficulties in tacking to keep the sails facing the sun while making one orbit around the earth to gain escape velocity...
...territorial issues are tricky at PBHA in the summer, when students run several summer camps through the Summer Urban Program (SUP) and demand for student volunteers is high. With an increase in public service internship opportunities, some students could consider setting sail for brighter shores than Cambrdige for a summer of service...
...idea behind solar sailing is simple. Although light is made of massless particles called photons, such ephemeral things exert real pressure, especially when they flow from so close a source as the sun. Attach a sail of lightweight Mylar or other material to a spacecraft, set it up in the path of that outrushing energy, and you ought to be able to move in almost any direction...
NASA has a keen interest in solar sailing and has budgeted $5 million to investigate 17 possible missions. It may select one as early as next month. But while the space agency has been mulling plans, the people behind the new ship, dubbed Cosmos 1, have been getting set to fly. The project is the brainchild of Russia's Babakin Space Center, near Moscow, and the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif., a think tank founded in 1979 by astronomer Carl Sagan and others. The two groups had long been developing plans for a solar-sail mission but got the cash...