I suggest she quit blaming other people and follow the Steve Martin Method.

If projects like the Global Village Construction Set achieve their goals, communities could establish their own industrial base to pursue big goals. Maker culture (and open source before it) has achieved some amazing things, like affordable home 3D printing, and it's accelerating. The failure of government and business to achieve big goals could be seen as an opportunity. What goals would you pursue?

Maybe that's a good thing.

Glad to help. Yeah, a sufficiently large (thrust) and lightweight (acceleration) sail could counteract and even exceed the sun's gravity. A sail mass/area of ~1.5 g/m^2, which accelerates at ~6 mm/s^2 at Earth would achieve this. Lower performance sails could still linger over the sun in "halo" orbits.

I think it's an opportunity when large organizations fail do do something new. They get out of the way, giving more flexible and innovative parties have a chance. I think expansion into space has, in part, been held back for a generation or two because we expected government space programs to do it all for us: throw enough tax dollars at it, and it will happen. It didn't, and now parties like SpaceX are making great strides - with government cooperation.

The Russians deployed the Znamya space mirror from a Progress resupply ship in 1993, and tried a second time in 1999. The Progress propelled and steered it to reflect a spot of light down on the Earth, so it didn't do actual solar sailing. IKAROS has that distinction. This new mission will actually test a 38m x 38m sail, so it will be the largest.

Except that the article is wrong. The sail will be 38m wide, or 1444m^2. That's 0.013N: 2 * (38m)^2 * 1368W/m^2 / (300,000,000m/s)

The Gizmag article was... imprecise. The sail will be a square 38m wide, with an area about 1400 m^2. It's based on a 20m wide sail L'Garde built and tested for NASA in 2005. More info here: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/crosscutting_capability/tech_demo_missions.html