Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
Maybe one of the more math-oriented people will come along and tell us how many GW or TW such a scheme would require but I suspect it's a lot and running it continuously for 10 years is a lot too.
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According to the wikipedia article it's on the order of a TJ necessary to push the craft and it could be done with a 100 GW array of 10 KW lasers (I suspect this is output power). This is ~10 million lasers. Even assuming a lasers of 10% efficiency (some lasers have efficiencies of <10%), we're looking at 1/18th of humanity's total energy consumption.
My ridiculous 86% speed one would need roughly a 4 TW laser output, assuming a 40 ton payload. The ship that stops would need about 1.83 TW laser output over ~4.34 years, again assuming a 40 ton payload. Also, it would need a power supply for the breaking magsail over ~18.662 years. Better start tiling Mercury with solar panels.