Close Sun-orbiting mirrors for beamed propulsion and space solar power.

NASA just announced a solar probe to travel quite close to the Sun, about
3.7 million miles from the solar surface:

Nasa’s hotly anticipated solar mission renamed to honour astrophysicist
Eugene Parker.
Renamed the Parker Solar Probe to honour solar astrophysicist who predicted
high speed solar wind, the spacecraft will attempt to get close to sun’s
surface.
Wednesday 31 May 2017 07.08 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/science/...lar-probe-plus

Spacecraft able to get this close to the Sun could potentially allow beamed
interstellar propulsion. For a spacecraft of any size, you would need huge
amounts of beamed power. Where to get it? If you make the beam be
solar-powered then can just use space-borne mirrors to focus the Suns rays.
But the mirror(s) would have to be impractically large if they were in Earth
orbit.

But what if we placed them close to the Sun? At the distance quoted of 3.7
million miles away from the Sun a mirror 1 km on a side could collect a
terawatt worth of power.

Note this could also be used for space solar power when beamed towards
Earth.

Bob Clark

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