quote:
Originally posted by apache:
In fact, a sailboat makes the best speed when the wind is blowing perpendicular to the direction of travel.
Perhaps my memory is faulty, but IIRC my sailboat always went fastest when I was sailing with the wind, i.e., with the wind directly astern. I suppose I might have had a poorly-designed sailboat. Worse, some landlubber said that the water resistance is irrelevant to tacking. LOL! What do you think the keel/centerboard is for?
But getting back to the original topic, I think solar sails should be just a picturesque name for a technology that really has little or nothing to do with sailing or 21st century human ideas about solar sails. So the description should be changed.