[Interview] Solar Sail Propulsion: Reality VS Fiction with Les Johnson

Les Johnson is the Principle Investigator with NASA's upcoming Near-Earth Asteroid Scout mission that will fly on the SLS and test solar sail navigation. But at the same time, he's a science fiction author. So, in this interview, we discussed both these sides of his life. 📖 Les Johnson's Books: https://www.lesjohnsonauthor.com/ 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 00:00 - Intro 01:01 - Meet Les Johnson 02:19 - Working at NASA and being a science fiction writer at the same time 06:50 - Solar sails proplusion 10:29 - Flying towards the Sun with solar sails 14:32 - Near-Earth Asteroid Scout mission flying on the SLS 21:07 - Why so few solar sails are used now 27:07 - What's the future of solar sails 39:07 - Methods of interstellar exploration 53:02 - Role of science fiction in modern space exploration 01:00:10 - Outro 📺 VIDEO VERSION https://youtu.be/vZhDbzdqAWQ 📰 EMAIL NEWSLETTER Read by 55,000 people every Friday. Written by Fraser. No ads. Subscribe. It's FREE: https://universetoday.com/newsletter 🎧 PODCASTS Universe Today: https://universetoday.fireside.fm/ Weekly Space Hangout: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0-KklSGlCiJDwOPdR2EUcg/ Astronomy Cast: http://www.astronomycast.com/ 🤳 OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA Twitter: https://twitter.com/fcain Twitter: https://twitter.com/universetoday Facebook: https://facebook.com/universetoday Instagram: https://instagram.com/universetoday 📩 CONTACT FRASER frasercain@gmail.com ⚖️ LICENSE Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)