[Jonty30]

Why, we have just the thing.

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/mit-plastic-stronger-than-steel

[lee martell]

Don’t be like the Greek God Icarus, who flew too close to the Sun while using his handcrafted Waxen Wings.
It’s a lesson you only learn once.

[sauropod]

bkmk

[Chad C. Mulligan]

Concept central to Niven and Pournelle's sci-fi novel The Mote in God's Eye, forty+ years ago. I don't think it was new even then. These guys are just filling in the details.

[Recompennation]

Sounds of giverment munnny.
Next up a giant flashlight tied to the ass end pointing backwards under the premise that action and reaction will apply to photons.7

[zeestephen]

How does it slow down?

[outofsalt]

So, 800,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri by sail ship.
At the half way mark, wouldn’t the photons from AC work against the solar photons? I guess we’ll have to wait 400,000 years to find out

[backwoods-engineer]

And how are they going to get data back from it without an antenna? A 3x3 meter aperture (gain 40 dB at 3 GHz) at a 4 LY distance is a sick joke for a radio link budget. But, academicians don’t worry their little Marx beards about such trivia as the ability to send radio signals back from a star probe.