The flight of the dragonfly

What Hacker News says

1. curtisOct 2017
   I think all of Robert Forward's stuff would qualify. My favorites are

   Rocheworld (AKA The Flight of the Dragonfly) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocheworld

   and

   Dragon's Egg - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg

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2. T-ANov 2016
   It's been a long time since I read Foundation, but I'm pretty sure Asimov was too smart to explain how those "ultrawave relays" worked. As a reader I am therefore free to assume that they are based on future physics discoveries (maybe involving wormholes?). That's fine as long as there is no obvious contradiction of known physics.

   The really hard way though is to do what Robert Forward did in "Flight of the Dragonfly [1]: it includes 30+ pages and 12 figures with technical details. He worked it all out at the level of a real mission proposal.

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocheworld

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3. falcolasFeb 2016
   In the story "Flight of the Dragonfly", which used the same propulsion system, they simply detached a portion of the sail, and used it to reflect the beam back at the spacecraft to decelerate it.
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4. chiphFeb 2016
   Physicist Robert L. Forward mentioned it in his book Rocheworld (later republished as The Flight of the Dragonfly)in the early 1980's, with the concept work being done in the 1970s.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#Interstellar_flight

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5. arethuzaFeb 2015
   It was "The Flight of the Dragonfly".

   One the other hand the same reviewer described the aliens in the novel as being Californian surfers....

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