Sebastian Scholz

And the trade-off is speed, I'm assuming, right?

Yes, of course, there are some downsides.

Compared to a normal combustion engine, the civic impulse that you get is rather low.

So that means the acceleration is extremely low, actually, in the area of a few newtons versus kilonewtons that you get from normal propulsion.

So that means you have to plan your trajectories accordingly.

But I mean, the benefit is that this propulsion is infinite compared to the fuel, because at some point fuel runs out, but the sun, it's going to take a very long time for it to run out.

Yeah, but even if you're too far away from the sun, you still get some amount of propulsion.

I mean, it's not like you're on an empty tank.

You still have some amount of movability even if the sun is very low.

But if you're on the outside of the solar system, you're going to have to move a bit slower.

Yes, that's absolutely true.

Yes, quite extensively, as a matter of fact.

So for the solar sails, we have launched in January 2023, so right around the time when I joined the company, we've launched a satellite, a demonstration mission for this technology, the solar sails.

And the onboard data handling system, our part of the satellite, is more or less completely written in Rust.

So we have a few sea libraries underneath the hood, but the main code and all of the supporting test equipment was written using Rust.

Yes, that's one of the great dangers if you develop something for space.

You get one shot.

with your satellites.

And if you mess it up, it's not like you could just go up and try to reboot it.

You really have only one shot.