STEM Saturday on the Steem blockchain, Week #58: Solar sails and commercial space flight

Please visit the /promoted page to view this week's STEM Saturday post promotions.

This was the 58^th week of our post promotions for STEM Saturday on the Steem blockchain, and our little community now occupies the top of the /promoted page for the 58^th consecutive Saturday. This week, I promoted two Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) posts by two authors.

If you are a STEM enthusiast, please consider following the authors that you'll find in this article and also consider joining our community. If you would like your own post to be considered for STEM Saturday post promotion, please see the guidelines at the end of this post.

This week's promotions included the following posts (in alphabetical order, by author). Each author has been set as a 10% beneficiary on this post. All posts were passed through at least three different online plagiarism checks and three different checks for AI detection.

In the 1980s, three scientists (including Carl Sagan) established The Planetary Society with the goal of advancing space exploration. One of the society's early accomplishment was to imagine the concept of a "solar sail" or a "light sail", which can power a spaceship in similar fashion to how wind sails powered sailing ships for centuries. Instead of unfurling the sail to capture the wind, an unfurled light sail harnesses the momentum of photons that are traveling through space. With wind sails, many human societies developed the technology independently. Similarly, we can assume that many interplanetary societies could also develop the idea of a solar sail, and they might be found throughout the universe. Because the momentum of a photon is tiny, the size of the solar sail would need to be very large, and it would need to be made of a light-weight material. Even still, a craft that is powered by this technology would accelerate very slowly at first, coming up to very fast speeds over the course of time. Although this technology seems futuristic, it was already proven in 2010, when the Japanese Space Agency used its Ikaros probe to complete a mission to fly past the planet, Venus.

Founded by Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic completed testing of its VSS Unity space craft in May, and launched its first commercial mission on June 29. Designated, "Galactic 01", the craft launched at 8:30 am on June 29 and returned safely to the space port at 9:42, after reaching an altitude of 85.1 kilometers. The mission was performed at the behest of the Italian Air Force, and the craft carried three Italian researchers - as well as an astronaut instructor. The team conducted experiments to learn about how humans are effected by microgravity, and also mixing solid and liquid substances in microgravity.

The Community

The Popular STEM community is intended to be a place for accessible STEM conversations (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). If you have an interest in STEM topics, please come join us!

About STEM Saturday

If members would like to have your own STEM content considered for future promotions, please come join us and start contributing. I don't know how long I'll be continuing the tradition, but while I do, here are the minimum requirements for consideration (subject to change without notice ;-).

1. Original, plagiarism-free content
2. Minimum word count: currently 300 words, but this may be adjusted.
3. The content must not be cross-posted on other web sites or blockchains. Correct use of the #steemexclusive tag is encouraged.
4. English language. (sorry, it's the only one I know)
5. Because a post leaves /promoted at payout time, posts created shortly before STEM Saturday may be more likely to be chosen than older posts.

All community members are invited to create original and exclusive content that can be considered for future promotions.

Please help grow the science & technology audience on the Steem blockchain by following the Science and Technology on the Social Blockchain Facebook page then liking & sharing our links!

Visit the /promoted page and #burnsteem25 to support the inflation-fighters who are helping to enable decentralized regulation of Steem token supply growth.)