Quote:
Originally Posted by TGLS
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.
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Per second, yes. The laser sails are only fired for a few minutes, though - they're supposed to hit accelerations of 100 km/s^2, and are shot at very tiny drones, so they don't need to fire for years. Assuming you launch one per day, and each launch requires 10 minutes, that's more like 1/2,592th of Earth's energy consumption.