Kickstarter Raises Over $400,000 For Bill Nye’s Solar Sail Spacecraft

The Internet has given the Planetary Society and its CEO Bill Nye a big stamp of approval for its Solar Sail spacecraft, set for launch in Fall, 2016. The group of space enthusiasts set up a Kickstarter page to raise some additional funds, a mere $200,000, and have already received $400,000. With 42 days to go, Bill Nye has set up new goal-posts to raise public awareness of the project.

So, what is a Solar Sail?

Perhaps Bill Nye explained it best, or at least most confusingly, in a Reddit AMA post.

“Photons (particles of light) have no momentum, but they are pure energy, and they have [mass]. So, in the vacuum of space, we can design a very low mass spacecraft with a very large reflective area, and it will get a continuous push.”

As previously reported by Inquisitr, the Planetary Society’s Solar Sail spacecraft is called the LightSail, and its very large reflective area is roughly 32 square meters (344 square feet). The sail will deploy from a small CubeSat (Cube Satellite).

The biggest advantage of the Solar Sail is cost.

As Bill Nye explained in the Kickstarter promotion video (which also includes Neil DeGrasse Tyson), the Sun will be pushing on the sail all the time. That means it doesn’t need expensive rocket fuel and it can keep accelerating (to a point) so long as it has light. For example, the LightSail project has a $5.45 million dollar price tag. The craft could potentially even go to other solar systems on a shoe-string budget.

The low-cost means that a small number of donors can fund Solar Sail projects, choosing where the spacecraft will go without a big government entity getting in the way.

Nye explained, “This democratizes space…one you’re up there you can fly to the moon or beyond to other planets.”

Bill Nye’s group is planning a preliminary mission for May 20th, according to the Washington Post. The CubeSat will get a ride from an Atlas V rocket. It won’t completely make it out of the Earth’s atmosphere, but it will give researchers a chance to test the deployment system and see if the Solar Sail can successfully deploy.

If the preliminary test works out, the first real flight will happen in Fall 2016, hitching a ride off SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.

The project, in one form or another, has been in the works for decades, well before Bill Nye became its spokesman. The concept was famously promoted by Carl Sagan, co-founder of the Planetary Society, on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show in September, 1976.

The modern project has faced some hiccups, including losing a spacecraft on the 2005 Cosmos 1 rocket from Russia.

But, it’s clear that Internet users are ready for the idea to finally get a chance to fly. Bill Nye has increased the ceiling for the Kickstarter fundraiser to $1.2 million, with the final goal of promoting education and awareness of the new technology.

[Image Credit: Planetary Society]