Dyson-Harrop to power an ion engine?

With all the interest in VASIMR and the idea of getting to Mars in 39 days, the biggest challenge I can see is having a power source that is strong and light enough to make that possible. So I was thinking, shouldn't a Dyson-Harrop satellite built into some hypothetical spaceship be able to easily provide the energy for the ion drive?

According to Wikipedia:

A relatively small Dyson"“Harrop satellite using a 1-centimetre-wide copper wire 300 metres long, a receiver 2 metres wide and a sail 10 metres in diameter, sitting at roughly the same distance from the sun as the Earth, could generate 1.7 megawatts of power "“ enough for about 1000 family homes in the US.

Considering that this would be attached to a spaceship, the sail could be discarded and the Dyson-Harrop is able to be scaled up and down and be used anywhere (for the most part) in the solar system.

So is there something I'm missing here that makes this infeasible? Because to me this seems like a relatively cheap and easy way to power fast ion drives.

posted almost 8 years ago

rclev‭

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