Orbital simulations of laser-propelled spacecraft

Spacecraft accelerate by directing propellant in the opposite direction. In the traditional approach, the propellant is carried onboard in the form of material fuel. This approach has the drawback of being limited in Delta v by the amount of fuel launched with the craft, a limit that does not scale well to high Delta v due to the massive nature of the fuel. Directed energy photon propulsion solves this problem by eliminating the storage of fuel onboard. A phased array of lasers may be used to propel the spacecraft, contributing no mass to the spacecraft beyond that of the reflector, enabling a prolonged acceleration and much higher final speeds. This paper compares the effectiveness of such a system for propelling spacecraft into interplanetary and interstellar space across various laser and sail configurations. Simulated parameters include laser power, optics size and orbit as well as payload mass, reflector size and the trajectory of the spacecraft. As one example, a large 70 GW laser with 10 km optics could propel a 1 kg payload past Neptune (~30 au) in 5 days at 4% the speed of light, or a 1 g payload past Mars (~0.5 au) in 20 minutes at 21% the speed of light. However, even lasers down to 2 kW power and 1 m optics show noticeable effect on gram-class payloads, boosting their altitude in low Earth orbits by several kilometers per day which is already sufficient to be of practical use.