Notes from Independent Study Meeting Feb 24, 2022 Present: Richmond, Dayal - Dayal shows results from calculations of sails with tilts - results look good for very small tilt values, but results for large angles have problems - we discover the problem: code was not yet including the factor of cos(theta)*cos(theta) for photon pressure - code changed to do so - we discuss the issue of the sail coming too close to the Sun and then the gravitational forces becoming unrealistic - goals for next meeting (Tue, Feb 28): - insert code which stops the simulation if the distance of the sail from the Sun becomes less than (2 * solar radius) - re-run tests of sail for 2 years, using tilt angles of 0 to +90 degrees and 0 to -90 degrees - design a "near future" space probe realistic probe mass for a camera and radio dish, etc. realistic sail size realistic sail material compute total mass of sail + probe - we'll use this "near future" probe for future simulations - investigate the use of gnuplot