Solar Sailing Bibliography

This is a listing of published works about solar sailing in books, journals, and magazines. A variety of papers are available in electronic form on the internet. I have listed many of them in the Web Links -> Documents section. There are also a few documents of interest in the Archive section.

Books

These are books that are all about solar sails, or have sections in them that feature solar sails. There are fictional, non-fiction, highly technical, and non-technical books. Many are no longer in print, but can be found used. Book retailers like Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble have services that search for used books. If you know of a book that discusses solar sails that is not on this list, please let me know: ben@solarsails.info

For information about science fiction stories and books on solar sails, see Solar Sails in Science Fiction by Alan C. Elms.

Magazine and Journal Articles

There are numerous articles on solar sailing that appear in technical journals, and a lesser number in magazines. Rather than attempt to list them all here, there are a variety of journal search engines that will provide plenty of results for "solar sail" or "solar sails". I have listed some excellent NASA search tools here.

• NASA Technical Report Server Simple Search for "solar sail*"
• NASA Center for AeroSpace Information Technical Report Server - A comprehensive search engine of NASA, NACA, and open literature on aerospace. Searches cannot be automated in the web address, so you need to take the following steps to find all results on solar sail/sails/sailing etc.:
  • Select NASA Technical Reports or Open Literature under File Series to be searched.
  • Select the maximum - 150 - under Display a maximum of ... reports.
  • Enter the following in the "Search for (text)" box: solar ADJ sail*
    ADJ will make sure the words are next to each other, while the * will search for sail/sails/sailing etc.
  • You will only find 150 of the 300+ listings available for Open Literature, so you will need to enter additional search terms to narrow the field. You can find all the entries by specifying specific ranges in the Publication Date. For example, change the equals (=) to a greater-than (>) and type in the date 12.31.1989 to get all articles from Jan 1st 1990 through today.
  • Click on Tips for more effective searches for assistance.
• NASA Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports - A monthly publication that lists technical publications and presentations of NASA aerospace work.