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Q&A

Interstellar Propulsion for Hard Sci-fi Novel

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Hypothetical: Hundreds of years into the future. Humanity needs to travel to exoplanets quickly. I'm aiming for hard sci-fi. What kind of propulsion can travel people at 0.1 - 0.9 lightspeed?

Is it possible to build a laser sail so powerful that a spacecraft 3 km by 3km with people and life systems fixed to it can reach above speeds? According to the video in the link below, a one sq. km array of lasers can beam a 16 sq. metre nanocraft up to 0.2 c and would cost 10 billion dollars - which could be affordable today for billionaires like Jeff Bezos (his net worth is 137 billion dollars), the founder of Blue Origins. Admittedly, that's for a tiny craft.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4z6RZXv5p8 7:18

Context of my novel: There will be rich trillionaires, quadrillionaires or even octillionaires in the future who are willing to pool resources to develop efficient interstellar travel.

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/136363. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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