Quote:More to the point, the NOVA produces a hundred terawatt pulse that lasts on the order of microseconds. For this light engine to be useful, it would have to be capable of producing 138 TW continuously through the flight.
For a vessel the mass of the Apollo 11 moon mission, or about 47,000 Kg, to reach 1 g = 9.80 m/s^2 acceleration, you would need a coninuous output of about 138 Terawatts. For comparison, the world's current most powerful laser, the NOVA laser used in fusion experiments at Laurence Livermore National Laboratory, produces about 100 TW.
To sum up: unless you've got a zero-point energy cell in your back pocket, file this one under "pipe dreams" and move along.---
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