Talk:Magnetic sail

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Proposed Article Reorganization[edit]

This article has a an unchecked status for structure for the B-class. There is good material here, but many results are not cited. Also, there is some replication of topics. The Solar sail article provides a better structure and is a good model for this related technology. Since most of magnetic sail is based upon analogy to the Earth's magnetosphere, theoretical, simulation, lab experiments and only a few proposed trials the outline at this time need not contain sections for actual flight experience. Therefore, I propose the following re-organized structure.

  1. History of concept
  2. Physical Principles
  3. Modes of operation
  4. Proposed magnetic sail systems
  5. Theoretical models
  6. Experimental results and trials
  7. Performance comparison
  8. Fictional uses in popular culture
  9. See also
  10. References
  11. External links

Offline I have placed all of the existing material in this structure and have begun work on the uncited topics. I will continue working offline to collect this material, figures and citations so that parts of the above structure will not appear empty when I perform the reorganization.

Comments? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmcdysan (talk • contribs) 18:01, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I have filled out most of the above outline with prior text and new text, equations and images. Major changes and deletion of prior text has been placed in Talk page sections. I have inserted several Invisible comments (as a note to myself) regarding some additional editorial work to reduce duplication, reduce number of citations and shorten the article. Don't know if anyone is following this article and wants to discuss anything. I so, please reply to the appropriate topic, or reply to this topic.
Thanks! Dmcdysan (talk) 21:47, 9 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Have completed filling out the outline. May add or delete a few sentences here and there. Ended up being several hundred papers published on the topic of "magnetic sails." Selected those highlighting key results, performance predictions, design details and challenges.
Please discuss on Talk page for major issues or proposed changes.
Make lesser edits to the text with a brief description of what was changed and why, or minor edits to correct grammar, spelling, add clarity. Dmcdysan (talk) 22:56, 17 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Based upon comments from ScottForschler, an initial change to the outline and content by increasing the summary, adding an Overview section with illustrations and moving all content from the "History of concept" section into the Overview or the corresponding proposed design section is in progress and may take several weeks to complete. Therefore, I pinned this section from auto-archive. Dmcdysan (talk) 19:59, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Have completed moving material and populating the new Overview section with higher level text descriptions and images. Intent is to make the article more accessible to readers who don't want to go through the equations and glean what are the important messages.
Decided to keep a shorter "History of Concept" section that Wikilinks to the individual proposed design sections.
Created a new animation and replaced static image in the Summary section with wikilinks to sections in the article. Some of these still need higher level sentence(s) before delving into the equations.
Inserted a number of invisible comments on summarized thoughts that need to be verified against verifiable source.
Please comment here with constructive suggestions on the revised outline, duplication, portions that may not be necessary. Dmcdysan (talk) 22:48, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Saw on another Wikipedia thread a comment from an editor that one editor was responsible for the majority of the edits, so wanted to explain here why this is so for this article. As also mentioned on my Talk page: a large percentage of the edits were due to cut/paste reorganizing existing material (sometimes more than once) to fit in the proposed outline above, deleting material without reliable source citation, making summary of existing citations verifiable as documented by various topics in the archive. Reformatted equations and added a number of others from reliable source authors giving the equation number in the citation using Template:Rp to make this more readily verifiable. Rewrote summary paragraph and added Overview section in response to questions and suggestions by ScottForschler. Dmcdysan (talk) 19:36, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comparison with electric and solar sails[edit]

Section heading added to outline. Anticipated using other citations, but Perakis & Hein 2016 citation used was a preprint and not WP:RS - so deleted that text. Also, exponent for magnetic sail force may have had an error in that and Sharma 2020 citation. Reached out to Perakis & Hein in August 2022, but so far have not gotten response.

Text from prior to article reorganization placed there cut and pasted below: for discussion:

The operation of magnetic sails using plasma wind is analogous to the operation of solar sails using the radiation pressure of photons emitted by the Sun. Although solar wind particles have rest mass and photons do not, sunlight has thousands of times more momentum than the solar wind. Therefore, a magnetic sail must deflect a proportionally larger area of the solar wind than a comparable solar sail to generate the same amount of thrust. However, it need not be as massive as a solar sail because the solar wind is deflected by a magnetic field instead of a large physical sail. Conventional materials for solar sails weigh around 7 g/m2 (0.0014 lb/sq ft), giving a thrust of 0.01 mPa (1.5×10−9 psi) at 1 AU (150,000,000 km; 93,000,000 mi). This gives a mass/thrust ratio of at least 700 kg/N, similar to a magnetic sail, neglecting other structural components.

The solar and magnetic sails have a thrust that falls off as the square of the distance from the Sun. Dmcdysan (talk) 03:30, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This may still be a useful topic. There are two references that describe this but appear use an older version of the Freeland paper where the equation for magsail force has an error that significantly overestimate the magsail force. Another paper from Chineses authors is mentioned in "History of Concept." Keeping this topic here for now in planned auto-archive. Dmcdysan (talk) 19:54, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

purple dot[edit]

A magnetic sail is a proposed method of spacecraft propulsion where a spacecraft (shown as a purple dot in the center of the illustration) has a source that generates a magnetic field, which under certain conditions, summarized in the overview section, creates a magnetopause and a bow shock that deflect a plasma wind of charged particles.

My addition of the parentheses was reverted for lack of citation, of all things. Do we really want to say that the concept depends on the spacecraft's being represented as a purple dot? —Tamfang (talk) 18:12, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magnetic_sail&diff=1190852071&oldid=1189937386, you added parentheses indicating that the purple dot was optional, which contradicts the cited reliable sources for the designs in the article. Your statement and punctuation change is akin to saying that a magnet is optional at the origin of magnetic field lines, for which I believe there is no reliable source that states this. That is why I asked you to provide a reliable source stating this according to Wikipedia policy Wikipedia:No original research
Looking over this text, I believe the wording could be improved. Does the following address your concern?
A magnetic sail is a proposed method of spacecraft propulsion where a spacecraft with a magnetic field source located at the purple dot in the illustration generates a magnetic field, which under certain conditions, summarized in the overview section, creates a magnetopause and a bow shock that deflect a plasma wind of charged particles.
The purple dot indicates location, not the actual spacecraft (or source), analogous to a magnet’s location in a set of magnetic field lines.
If not, please propose another text revision here. Dmcdysan (talk) 14:59, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My intent was not to suggest that the magnet is optional, but that the illustration is optional; apparently you disagree even with that. Okay. —Tamfang (talk) 05:23, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand what you mean by "illustration" and now I am unclear with what you intended by adding parentheses. Assuming you meant the "purple dot" in the illustration, I made the rewording change suggested above to clarify that the "purple dot" is a "location" and not the "spacecraft," which appears to be how you read the previous text. Dmcdysan (talk) 17:17, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also added a phrase mentioning the Earth's magnetosphere as an analogy to hopefully help clarify this to readers. Dmcdysan (talk) 17:27, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Still trying to understand your comment regarding the "purple dot" in magnetic sail. It may be that your browser and/or its settings may not be compatible with the animated GIF used in the illustration, which I changed to animation. If you are seeing only the first image in the animation sequence, then your comments make more sense to me. I changed illustration to animationand summarized the sequence of images with colors and descriptions.
A few questions to help me better understand your issue. Are you seeing an animation, or just a static "purple dot?" What happens when you click on the image? Dmcdysan (talk) 16:50, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Posted this to User talk:Tamfang#Comments on Purple Dot in Magnetic Sail who responded that he could see animation (thank goodness!). Response was that issue is "the illustration is presented as a defining feature of the drive." Made edits by moved phrases, removed duplication, added summary of later details in attempt to address this issue in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magnetic_sail&diff=1194024322&oldid=1193420735 Dmcdysan (talk) 21:04, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Cluebot III Test[edit]

Test. Changed ClueBot III from 60 (days) to 3600 (hours). Dmcdysan (talk) 19:14, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Test for @UserID
@Dmcdysan,
Reply to
@Dmcdysan:
and UserID mention
Dmcdysan 66.75.77.130 (talk) 20:12, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Test for @UserID
@Dmcdysan,
66.75.77.130 (talk) 20:13, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Reply to
@Dmcdysan:
66.75.77.130 (talk) 20:14, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Plasma magnet move[edit]

There's now a separate article for the plasma magnet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_magnet. I think much of the text currently on this page for the plasma magnet design should be moved there. Final Muscid (talk) 00:42, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There isn't much background or content there, and I believe most of the citations and content are already in this magnetic sail article. There is already a link to "Magnetic Sail" in "See Also" for the plasma magnet article. Could remove the separate Plasma magnet page and have it redirect here ensuring that no content is lost before removing the separate plasma magnet sail article. Dmcdysan (talk) 00:56, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

wow this is unreadable[edit]

this entire article appears to be twelve high school science projects copy pasted together 99.196.12.236 (talk) 13:51, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly, I must agree. I'm not going to get into an extended discussion of this, let alone try to suggest any edits; I did that extensively with Dmcdysan last year and he agreed with some of my better points, while admittedly some of my points simply expressed confusion. But whatever the improvements this may have led to, a quick glance at the middle of the article shows it is still very dense with complex equations and terms which need constant definition, with the sub-sections often not relating to each other so that each one is an entirely new project, and which no one but an engineer or physics major would be able to keep track of. Most of this material should be relegated to the original articles it is gleaned from, leaving behind only a general summary accessible to the well-educated, interested reader.ScottForschler (talk) 22:19, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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