Solar Sail Bust

The privately funded venture to test solar sails in space is underway. Though I doubt anything useful will come out of this for two reasons.

The first is that it does nothing for reducing the costs of access to low earth orbit. Until that barrier is breached we can talk all we want about interplanetary travel - it will never happen.

The second reason is that the accellerations needed for travel to the moon, let alone anywhere else would take a typical sail months where chemical rockets can get there in weeks. It may be cheaper, but does it really justify the increase in time it would take to get to your destination? And also solar radiation pressure decreases the farther you go out, so the concept of using solar sails as a form of interplanetary transport is a fantasy until someone convinces me otherwise. It's more useful for inner planets interplanetary exploration more than anything else.