epepke
Philosopher
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2003
- Messages
- 9,264
Yes, although there are just a few problems, the biggest one being that of scale.
The numbers for radiation pressure are straightforward:
E = p x c, (p is momentum, the x is "times"), so
dE/dt = dp/dt x c, where dp/dt is force, and dE/dt is power.
in mks, the unit of force is the newton, which will accelerate one kg at one meter/sec^2. Since a one g acceleration is about 10 m/sec^2, to get a one g acceleration of a one kg mass, you need
dE/dt = 10 x 3 x 10^8 watts,
or just about 3 gigawatts of optical power.
For a 100 metric ton vehicle, you need 300 terawatts of beam power to get a 1 g acceleration. (This is why I said a photon drive makes a dandy ship's weapon.) And that's continuous power, not pulsed.
To answer an earlier question, you can improve the efficiency of the drive by using opposing mirrors. Make the vehicle with a flat mirrored base, and oppose it with a massive mirror. Light from the photon drive accelerates the ship. It then hits the opposing mirror and is reflected. Most of the reflected beam hits the mirrored base of the ship. When it is reflected it exerts radiation pressure on the ship, and the beam then travels to the mirror, and the cycle repeats ad infinitum.
There are two reasons why this is not as good an idea as you might think.
1) This is intrinsically limited, and not perpetual motion, because with each reflection the momentum imparted to the mirror is deducted from the photons in the beam. As the beam bounces back and forth it is continually red-shifted, imparting less and less momentum with each bounce.
2) This is not terribly useful for interstellar travel due to beam spread. As the ship and mirror separate, the beam gets wider and wider, and will eventually start to spill around the edges of the mirrors. Over very large distances (but very small compared to the proposed voyage), virtually all of the photon beam will miss the mirror. Also, keeping the secondary mirror aligned with the ship, at the same time it is being hit with a ginormous energy flux would be, as the phrase goes, non-trivial. Likewise cooling both mirrors. Unless you want to specify perfectly reflective mirrors at extreme power levels - oh, why the Hell not?
Might be useful for deceleration into a star system, though, to get a little more boost when far away from the star. By the time the mirror got far away, you'd be closer to the star.