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‘Solar Sailing for Human Survival’ Is Theme of 2008 Scholar on Campus Lecture
New York City College of Technology (City Tech) Physics Professor Gregory L. Matloff’s interest in the heavens was born with the gift of a telescope from his parents on his 13th birthday. “My dad was a dentist and was hoping I’d eventually pursue a medical career,” Matloff told his audience as he began his Scholar on Campus Lecture at City Tech on April 14. “I’m pretty sure he planned to buy me a microscope next.”
But after Matloff’s gaze was fixed skyward on the immensity of space, there was no turning back. For nearly half a century he has been fascinated with the night sky – from the lunar craters and Martian polar ice caps to the glorious rings of Saturn and the more than one billion galaxies to which the visible universe is home.
Matloff, who grew up in Williamsburg/Brooklyn, was only 16 when he enrolled in the undergraduate program in physics at Queens College. Upon graduation, he got a job as a junior optical engineer with an electronics firm located in Queens and Syosett. The company produced star trackers – automatic devices used to orient spacecraft by celestial navigation. His job was to develop techniques to calibrate these devices using photoelectric observatory data for bright stars, and his work resulted in his first published paper in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Optics. He soon enrolled in the master’s program in astronautical engineering at New York University and later in NYU’s doctoral program in atmospheric physics.
Over the course of a distinguished career in research and teaching, Matloff has published more than 100 scientific papers and authored or co-authored six popular books on astronomy and astronautics, including The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer's Guide to Interstellar Travel, a work that helped establish space travel as a branch of applied science. His latest book, Living Off the Land in Space: Green Roads to the Cosmos, co-authored with NASA manager Les Johnson and Brooklyn artist C Bangs, presents a visionary concept for the future of interplanetary and interstellar travel. It describes the technologies under development for advanced in-space propulsion systems and discusses how humankind will draw on the natural forces of the cosmos in the exploration and eventual settlement of nearby and more distant worlds.
Matloff’s Scholar on Campus Lecture derived from his forthcoming book Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel, also co-authored with Johnson and with Italian physicist Giovanni Vulpetti, to be published in June. The new book received a lengthy pre-publication review in the April 10 issue of Nature, “which is roughly equivalent in the world of science to being included on Oprah’s Booklist,” Matloff quipped at the start of his talk. He also announced that NASA had just informed him that America’s first solar sail-propelled spacecraft will be launched in June at about the time of publication of the book.
Matloff has worked as a consultant to NASA for more than a quarter of a century, with his research focusing on the development of in-space propulsion technologies, atmospheric science, space astronomy and methods of protecting Earth from asteroid impacts. “The motivation underlying our efforts to venture into space consists of more than scientific curiosity,” he reminded his audience. “In view of the increasing luminosity and eventual demise of our sun and other natural or self-inflicted disasters that could befall us before then, the survival of life as we know it will depend on our finding places other than Earth to call home. While we might not have to relocate to the farther reaches of our solar system for another one billion years and to other star systems for several billion years after that, the time we have to develop the means to do so might be a lot shorter than we think.”
He is confident that solar sail in-space propulsion technology will play a major role in several vital aspects of our further exploration, mining and settlement of the solar system. “The wonderful thing about solar sail technology is that it will enable us to navigate space largely free of the need for on-board fuel. Solar sail spacecraft are propelled by the force of sunlight, and a vehicle’s course can be easily altered by shifting the position of the sail in relation to the sun.
“Our early exploration of the solar system is likely to be largely robotic and robot-manned craft will play an important part in the next phases of our space program,” Matloff noted. “These will include the deflection of threatening near-Earth objects such as Apophis (long thought to be an asteroid but now believed to be an extinct comet) that will by-pass 20,000 miles above the planet’s surface in 2029 and return again in 2036 on a potential impact course. While it’s only about the size of a football field, a direct hit in just the ‘wrong’ place could kill millions.” Matloff went on to describe how a solar sail-powered space craft equipped with a solar concentrator – a device that gathers and intensely focuses the sun’s radiant energy – could be positioned near the asteroid to differentially heat it at a specific point and produce an exhaust jet from its melting surface that would alter its trajectory.
The technology also could play a major role in the search for natural resources that are rapidly depleting on Earth. “As we begin to deflect Earth-threatening asteroids and other objects, we can maneuver them into new orbits in close proximity to or even around the planet,” Matloff added. “Many of these objects are rich in mineral and other resources, which could be mined by robotic means and shipped back to Earth. In time, we even could establish manufacturing operations on some of these objects to reduce the increasing atmospheric pollution such operations produce on Earth.”
Longer term, solar sail technology could be a major assist in our successfully completing interstellar voyages when the time comes for humankind to abandon our solar system in advance of the death of our sun. “When the sun expands to 150 times or more its current size,” Matloff noted, “the additional thrust that expansion will provide solar sail-launched vehicles will be enormous.
“In coming centuries,” he added, “it is quite possible that the means will be developed to construct huge solar-powered lasers in space. If these can be maintained in a stable orientation and if problems like hitting a 100-plus-mile-wide sail a trillion miles away can be solved, solar sail-launched spacecraft could be further accelerated on centuries-long flights to a neighboring star system such as Alpha Centauri. Of course, as there is no giant star in that system and no native Alpha Centaurians that we know of to construct a similar laser to aid in deceleration, the ship would have to use a technology such as magnetic braking to slow down. All of this is theoretically possible and scientists worldwide are already at work devising the technologies to make such journeys possible.”
At City Tech, Dr. Matloff is currently working with Department of Physics Chair Dr. Roman Kezerashvili and colleague Dr. Lufeng Leng to research the interaction between solar sails and the near-sun environment as well as solar sail condition monitoring. His forthcoming book on solar sails will be followed in 2009 by one on how space technology will enhance life on Earth. Another work in development – a visionary book of both science and fiction, if not in the usual format – will look at humankind’s future migration to other star systems, what must be accomplished beforehand to prepare those systems to support Earth-indigenous life, and in what form we might make such journeys as our sun begins to die.
