>accelerating it via radiation pressure to 0.2𝑐 within a few minutes [7].
That probe must be made in unobtainium to handle that acceleration. For 0.2c in 5 minutes it's 20394G!
That probe must be made in unobtainium to handle that acceleration. For 0.2c in 5 minutes it's 20394G!
The spacecraft weigh 1 gram each, so that would be 20kg of thrust pressure.
Assuming he spacecraft are nominally 2d in construction (a silicon wafer) and the pressure is evenly distributed, I see no reason why you couldn’t expect them to withstand 20k g acceleration.
20kg isn’t a lot to stack on essentially a chunk of solid glass if evenly applied.
A 1 gram flat chip of glass with about 6cm2 of area (the proposed “spaceship” design) would withstand even more than steel by nearly a factor of two.
People are freaking out about 20,000g, but you could push a flat disk of glass like that at about 60,000,000g before it failed. Good Glass has a compressive strength of about 1000 megapascals.
How much worse would it be if sustained over a long period?
People have a bias against high forces because they’re made of meat.