[LibWhacker]

He’s going to have to scale up the power considerably. I think RightWhale has it right... If my back of the napkin calculations are right, and If he can scale it up by a billion-fold (i.e., to 35,000 Newtons), a million kilogram ship (i.e., one of respectable size), starting at an initial velocity of zero, would travel about one kilometer towards Mars in a week’s time. LOL, not too good. So he’s going to have to scale up by a factor on the order of quadrillions or so.

[r9etb]

If my back of the napkin calculations are right, and If he can scale it up by a billion-fold (i.e., to 35,000 Newtons), a million kilogram ship (i.e., one of respectable size), starting at an initial velocity of zero, would travel about one kilometer towards Mars in a week’s time

Uh, no. a = 35e3/1e6 = 35e-3 m/sec².

It would take about 28.6 sec per meter per second -- so a day's thrust would give you around 3 km/sec of delta-V.