/sci/ - Science & Math

Suddenly thought about the solar sail concept. Especially the laser-accelerated one.
If the sail was made of small units whose orientation could be controlled, the sail could act as a sort of fresnel lens and concentrate the propulsive energy to a focal point so as to vaporize or move dangerous obstacles.

Which leads me to something else, which is that such solar sails could be used as interstellar re-concentrators for interstellar lasers, for peaceful or martial purposes.

Think of the already destructive nicoll-dyson laser focused by an interstellar solar sail into a more accurate and more energetic beam.

>>3526884
At 0,01c it would take approximately four hundred years.
At 0,1c it would take forty years and so on and so forth.

At those speeds the relativistic gains would still be too minuscule to help with endurance.

But if we build a larger, heavily armored ship capable of withstanding speeds closer to c, say 0,5 or 0,75, it could get there in eight or six years.