Good work of course. Sooner or later we will learn to convert readily available Dark Matter radiation into impulse radiation and have a continous supply of energy for a photon engine.
Then it all has to shrink into a space craft to produce a one g trust so that it is useful.
That would allow us to haul tonnage around the Solar system.
Breakthrough Starshot Photon Engines – Millions of Densely Packed Lasers
Brian Wang | April 10, 2021
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2021/04/breakthrough-starshot-photon-engines-millions-of-densely-packed-lasers.html
The status of the Breakthrough Starshot project (laser pushed sail for an interstellar mission).
They have broken it down into three major challenges. The photon engine, the sail and communications.
They have twelve academic teams working on the photon engine design and components. They have determined several designs that will not work for the photon engine and currently believe that they can make it from hundreds of millions of densely packed 10 centimeter wide mirror-lasers.
It could be built now for the 100 gigawatt system but it would cost trillions. The design work is to drive the cost down to $10 billion or less.
They are looking at many demonstrations on the ground and then with cubesats and then a significant complete system within ten years.
SOURCES- Breakthrough Starshot
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
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