Building an interstellar starship during transit

Would it be feasible to have an interstellar vessel be constructed in flight after smaller sections are boosted up to speed? The idea here is about using laser sails which would be easier to use with somewhat smaller designs, because of problems with areal density, the mass carried per unit of area(a consequence of the square/cube law).

The problem is that once you're up to speed, you'd really want artificial gravity. A ship small and light enough to make laser sails practical would be hard to give decent artificial gravity. So one potentially interesting solution occurred to me. Instead of building the ship before launching it, take smaller independent sections of the ship and launch them individually, building the full sized ship once they are all together. Does this seem feasible, once you accept the ideas of laser sails and interstellar vessels in the first place?

Another upside is that there is something of an interesting dramatic hook to the idea that the smaller ships are launched independently and form their own societies before coming together.

EDIT: To clarify, I mean in deep space, at a fairly high speed of around 10-20% of light speed. I'm assuming the big risk during construction would be that of collisions.

posted over 4 years ago

Adam Reynolds‭

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