Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Dyson-Harrop to power an ion engine?

+0
−0

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.

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/70951. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »