Introduction
Earth has a problem, overpopulation. Many scientist believe that mankind will soon grow to a population that our planet cannot sustain. The land to house, feed, and support the population is dwindling. Increases in drought and natural disasters are occurring more frequently and with increased severity. Pollution is increasing and man’s ability to consume resources is far outweighed by his ability to replace them. These are all problems shared by leaders of some and many countries. Hunger has stricken most of Africa and other places around the world. India and China make up approximately 37 percent of the world’s population. These are not problems that one has to research to find. There are public service announcements on television programming in the United States, one of the world’s superpowers and argued the most powerful nation, that state one in five American children will go to bed hungry. China has a law known commonly around the world that restricts families to one child unless pre-approved. Where do we go from here?
Statement of Need
Space has long been an area of curiosity for man. Upward man has found a home in the stars, Heaven, one that has yet to be fully explored. How do we do this? How does man find a place to settle when the planet he has called home since the beginning of time is slowly, but surely, dying? The solution is in the history of man himself. The human population took millennia to grow out of Africa. Slowly, man crawled and then walked, eventually running to every corner of the planet. When water ways could not be crossed man settled. When the area he was in could no longer support his life or the life of those around him he moved on. Agriculture led to permanent settlements where people could raise crops year after year and populations could grow. Overpopulation and a lack of supplies or curiosity of the unknown could have led man to the first ocean going ships. Whatever it was the seas and ships lead to no one place on earth undiscovered. “Numerous oceanic islands were discovered, but every inhabitable land had already been reached and settled by one apparently homogeneous type of man,” Thor Heyerdahl wrote, “referred to in the early journals as ‘Indians,’ but later denominated the Polynesian sub-division of the yellow-brown race.” This quote coming from The Voyage of the Raft Kon-Tiki which Heyerdahl and others hand built and used to try and prove a scientific theory, that Polynesia was settled from the Americas not Asia. Heyerdahl was interested not necessarily how these people got there but where did they come from. Many scholars at the time agreed that they peoples of the Pacific Islands were immigrants from South-East Asia. Heyerdahl thought otherwise, his theory was that Polynesia was settled from the east by pre-Incan Peruvians circa 500 A.D. and North-Western North America circa 1200 A.D. Depicted in the motion picture, Kon-Tiki, to get his theory published he was told that he would have to prove it, by doing it. Heyerdahl and others then build the raft and without the ability to steer float with a sail from Peru to Polynesia 4,000 miles away in 101 days.
Without digging into the math behind the ability solar sails could lead man from the Earth to the Heavens. Man has gracefully left the surface of earth with chemical propellant rockets to scratch the surface of space. Now, taking a look back on history he may have an answer in front of him on going further. What if Heyerdahl could have launched 1,000 ships all equipped with data collection technology from a 1,000 different locations. I would propose doing this with small inexpensive, solar sail equipped craft from an area already in space, such as the International Space Station. The solar sail technology has been and is currently being tested in space programs around the world. The first notable program was IKAROS launched by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2010. IKAROS was the first craft expecting to use a solar sail propulsion system as its primary means of propulsion and reported completion and success within the first six months making the closest pass by Venus at 80,800 km. It has not been smooth sailing for the programs around the world. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scrapped a full size demonstration program in the early 2000s and invested what was left of $30 million in a program called NanoSail-D.
Solution Proposal
The NanoSail program could be what saves mankind. If one could send these craft into space near and far, set to drift with sails open and minimal steering inputs one could map the fastest and optimal routes through space. These optimal routes will allow mankind to take to the stars. The human race will have definitive answers in space travel and will know exactly the fastest route out of our solar system. Heading way to the question, where do we go from here?
Objectives and Outcomes
By continually collecting data from craft that need no chemical propulsion and minimal steering inputs man could in fact find a home in the heavens. The measure of success would be quantitated by the data collected. To simply map our solar system more in depth and to know the optimal-natural routes to be taken would be considered success. The data collected from an endeavor like this would be beneficial. The population continues to grow on Earth and resources continue to be depleted. Mankind must look for solutions to these issues. This program and the sails themselves could continue to be beneficial for years to come rather man makes the leap to space or not.
Conclusion
One must always look back on the past so as not to repeat it in the future. The mark of a smart man is to learn from his mistakes, the mark of a wise man is to learn all he can from his experience. The past has shown us he way to the future and now is the time to use Solar Sail technology to seize the day. Thank you for taking the time to read this proposal in its entirety. Although the past is gone man has an obligation to use lessons learned to jump start the future.

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[ 1 ]. www.worldpopulationstatistics.com, (2014)
[ 2 ]. Heyerdahl, (1950) The Voyage of the Raft Kon-Tiki, 20-41
[ 3 ]. Josselin De Jong, (1953), The Kon-Tiki theory of Pacific migrations, p. 2
[ 4 ]. Josselin De Jong, (1953), The Kon-Tiki theory of Pacific migrations, p. 3
[ 5 ]. Kon-Tiki motion picture, (2013)
[ 6 ]. Tsuda, (2011), Achievement of IKAROS, 183-184
[ 7 ]. Johnson (2011), Status of solar sail technology within NASA, 1687-1694