tell me why this wouldnt work, nerds. >nuclear power plant

>>8662952
Or we could stay on earth and not worry about all this shit.

>>8662952
Why would it work? How would it work? Capturing laser energy and use it to produce thust isn't going to be easy.

>if a laservator worked why wouldnt it work prove me wrong

It would work and it's happening right now.

>>8663012
an ionic thruster could do the job

>>8663028
source plox?

>>8662952
Because the atmosphere will dissipate a lot of the energy and even if it didn't it's still horribly inefficient for any spacecraft heavier than a coin.

>>8663060
who cares about efficiency? you can create energy so cheaply on earth it doesnt matter if most of it lost when beaming it to the ship. the only hard part is the "turning laser energy into thrust" part.

>>8662952
laser would vaporize the spacecraft
for a laser that powerful

even if you had a perfectly manufactured mirror, microscopic thermal gradients would create impections in the mirror that lead to increased thermal gradients which rapidly cascades into complete destruction of your spacecraft

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You're basically describing a space fountain, except that your design has extra inefficiencies due to the atmosphere being in the way, and high maintenance costs due to the need for ablative material for the lasers to turn into thrust.

>>8663163
>space fountain,
this one is completely different. the engineering difficulties are turning the laser into thrust. not having a 300 miles long elevator, which is definetely impossible to build.

>>8663091
you could for example generate electricity out of the intense heat and then power an ionic thruster.

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>>8663196
>which is definetely impossible to build.

As opposed to a laser which can penetrate the full height of the atmosphere and still have enough power to ablate metal, but inexplicably doesn't cause bloom and shed 100% of it's energy into the air a few hundred meters in front of the nose.

I keep mine behind the fridge, where do you keep yours?

>>8663196
>you could for example generate electricity out of the intense heat and then power an ionic thruster

ya what im saying is that you really couldnt in practice, because sufficiently heat tolerant materials do not exist

moreover, ionic thrusters are only efficient in vacuum. at atmospheric the isp drops and you'd need substantial reaction mass; eliminating any potential benefits

getting rid of reaction mass and thus the terrible scaling of the rocket equation is really the only reason to consider exotic launch options.

If we're stuck with reaction mass required, chemical rockets are actually quite good, and if we wanted to push performance envelope towards the theoretical maximum, a SSO nuclear saltwater rocket is stupidly efficient and can be built with present rechnology

>>8663070
The energy isn't cheap though.

>>8662952
Too inefficient to even lift the spaceship off the ground. Light contains very little energy.