The Elara Handbook
Welcome to Project Elara! Project Elara is the mission of a team of committed scientists, engineers, and other talented people, working across a diversity of fields, to pass down a better world to our future generations.
Who we are¶
We are an organization committed to developing open-source technologies that we believe can create a better future. Our current research focus is in developing a space-based solar power system that is 100% open-source and dedicated to a sustainable, resilient, and affordable energy future. We choose to make all our work open source, because we want that future to be for everyone.
These are indeed lofty goals, and we realize that even trying to begin is hardly simple. Therefore, we work as a team to complete this mission together. To advance, share, and preserve our collective knowledge and ability, and to build on each other’s work, we have put together this encyclopedic book. Everything you’d ever need to learn, develop, or contribute to Project Elara is here. And we dedicate this book to the world: the Project Elara Handbook is in the public domain and free to view, share, remix, and download, forever.
Reading the Handbook¶
Despite being Project Elara’s primary documentation, the Handbook can also be a comprehensive textbook for students in the sciences. It has useful information covered in a typical undergraduate course of physics and engineering, in addition to some more advanced and specific topics that go into electrical, mechanical, and aeronautical engineering. In addition, it contains a substantial amount of content on programming and software development, which we hope will be useful for CS students and self-learners alike.
Even if you’re not interested in Project Elara, we hope that the Elara Handbook can be useful as a general reference and textbook, particularly for self-learning or studying. If this is you, feel free to skip the majority of Project Elara-related content and start reading from the Introductory mathematics or Programming with Python chapter (depending on your interests).
Getting involved¶
Project Elara relies on a community of enthusiastic and commited people - everyone, no matter they are, is welcome to our team!
The newcomer’s guide¶
If you’re new to the Project, we are extremely glad to have you join us! To get started, please read How to get started in the project, which contains a complete, step-by-step guide on getting started with the Project.
Once you’ve gotten started, reading the Elara Handbook is the recommended way to learn more about the science behind our work. That said, we understand that reading technical and scientific documentation can easily be quite confusing, so we have organized the Handbook to require minimal prerequisite knowledge and background to read. For this, the Handbook holds distinct, important sections:
The first few chapters are “The basics.” This describes the fundamentals of our work, and the prerequisite physics and mathematics to work on technical aspects of the project.
The next few chapters are “The specifics.” This is about intermediate-level topics in physics and engineering, as well as a general guide to our research.
The chapters afterward are “The expert’s guide.” This has the most advanced topics not covered in prior sections, including theoretical physics, numerical analysis, and future extensions of our technology.
The final few chapters have the most important parts of Project Elara. It has information about our community and copies of our most important documents, including the Charter of Project Elara, the bedrock of our organization.
You may read these sections in any order you wish. While everyone’s learning needs are different, we give suggestions for which of the sections to read based on your interests/comfort level with the technical sciences:
I just want to learn about Project Elara, but I am not interested in the technical stuff. In that case, reading just the Project Elara overview chapter in “The basics” should be enough!
I want to learn the technical stuff, but I and unfamiliar with calculus, physics, or computer programming. In that case, we recommend reading all the chapters in “The basics” before progressing any further. We also recommend reading at least a fraction of “The specifics”. While reading everything in this chapter will provide you with a thorough understanding on which to do research, we understand that is not for everyone, so read according to your interests and time.
I have good familiarity with calculus, the basics of physics, and a language in computer programming, but I want to learn more. In that case, we recommend just skimming through “The basics” for a basic review. Afterwards, we strongly recommend reading “The specifics.” This section covers all the theoretical and applied foundations for understanding the Project’s core research, and explains the Project’s research. However, it is not necessary to read anything beyond.
I am strongly interested in theoretical or computational physics, and have a strong math and physics background. In that case, you should be set reading just the Project Elara overview chapter in “The basics”, then jumping straight to advanced topics in “The specifics” or “The expert’s guide”.
I am a developer and just want to work on code. In that case, we recommend just the Project Elara overview chapter in “The basics”, and then jumping straight to the Developer guide. You may then choose to read whichever parts suit your interest or necessary for your work. It may also be useful to review the Programming with Python chapter or the Comprehensive guide to programming chapters.
We are so grateful for each and every one of our team members, and everyone’s contributions, no matter how small, will be tracked and (eventually) added to Contributions at the end of the book. Your work brings us one step closer to changing the world for the better.
PDF version¶
For offline reading, a stable PDF version of this book is downloadable on the Handbook releases page. It is also possible to build a custom PDF of the book on your own computer by following our development instructions, but this requires some expertise with programming and development.
FAQs¶
I don’t understand the code within the Handbook. What is it there for?
There is inline code in the Handbook that does scientific calculations, generates graphs and plots, or solves particular equations. You do not need to understand them, but we will go over programming within the Handbook so that the code makes more sense.
Why is there so much incomplete/misplaced/undecipherable content?
We are a small team and though we want to produce documentation and work of the highest quality, our time constraints mean that the Handbook does have sections that seem out of place or are far too rushed. The Handbook is a work-in-progress and we highly encourage reporting any issues you find to our issues tracker.
Do I have to read through everything? This seems overwhelming and I’m not sure I can read this much.
No, you don’t have to read any more than you feel comfortable with! It’s okay to skip sections or read only a small part of the Handbook. We wrote this Handbook to be comprehensive because (among other reasons) we wanted to explain everything possible so that someone reading wouldn’t get lost when we explain our research. But there is no need to learn everything or read it all!
I’m reading the PDF version of the Elara Handbook, and I notice a bunch of stuff that doesn’t look like it should be there or weirdly-formatted stuff. What’s that about?
The web version of the Elara Handbook is the primary version (for now), and it includes internal links and HTML content that don’t always translate super well to PDFs. While we try to make the two compatible, we unfortunately haven’t had the time to look over everything. Again, we encourage you to report issues you find to our issue tracker (the link is given above).
The chapter numbers in the PDF don’t line up to the web version or the titles in the Handbook, why is that?
Our PDF generator tool works in a way that doesn’t distinguish between actual chapters and introductory pages. We are trying to figure out a way to solve this issue, but it will take time, and again, please report this issue (and any similar ones) so we know which places need fixing.
License¶
The Elara Handbook is and always will be open-source. The source files of the book are located at https://
We firmly believe that knowledge should be available for all humanity. Therefore, this book is dedicated forever in the public domain and will not be copyrighted whatsoever. We actively welcome others to share and use our work in whatever way they like, with or without attribution. Derived works do not need to be public domain and may be relicensed to any license. The full text of the Elara Handbook public domain license is available at https://