Deep Breakfast.

In eighth grade was Earth Science, taught by Steve Fink. He was thorough - - no nonsense, teaching through routine - - and passionate about science. Dan Billings was a first quarter lab partner. I loved the class. Balancing the facts learned in Earth Science and the abstracts gathered from TOTN's Science Friday, I swallowed my dose of Carl Sagan, and prepared for a career in science.

During this time I remember falling asleep thinking about becoming an astronomer. I had plans to get a telescope and attend late night meetings with other amateurs. Together we'd learn the basics and perhaps discover a new comet or asteroid. I imagined that by the end of high school I could have mapped my own quadrant of the night sky. Surely, my eighth grade self believe, I really can do this, be an astronomer, discover something great.

One of the essay questions for Fink's final exam asked the students to tell a short story that also used science to explain a phenomena (or something).

I wrote about intra-solar travel on my vessel, the Deep Breakfast. In my essay I described how impractical inter-stellar travel was... and that the only efficient means for traveling locally was the use of solar wind. The Deep Breakfast featured a massive sail, and a small crew. Cryogenics may have been involved.

Mr. Fink really liked my response, and I finished eighth grade still thinking that science was a possible career.

Eleven years later and I am no scientist, though I often pine on the subject, and I believe that manned exploration of space is irresponsible given the great inequity on Earth.

That being said, I am glad that there are a few organizations around that are actively trying to develop efficient means of space travel.

A few years ago the Planetary Society tapped into the inspiration of Dr. Carl Sagan in their failed attempt at a successful solar sail.

Today, Wired.com featured a short on a Finnish team that is using super thin wires to create a sail that would be twice the size of Manhattan.

To quote:

The solar wind is a high-speed plasma stream blowing outward from the Sun. The average pressure of the solar wind is miniscule (a mere 2 nanopascals, or 0.2 grams of weight per square kilometer), which explains the need for such a large sail.

"It's such a small force that it's really hard to imagine even," says Pekka Janhunen of the Finnish Meteorological Center, who leads the team behind the concept. "But it's still enough to move the spacecraft because it's doing it continuously over a large area." The sail is described (.pdf) in the latest issue of physics journal Annales Geophysicae.

So yeah, if this works, I want in.