Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Tasmodevil44]

Or for greater versatility of propulsion, you could use a combination of focus fusion techniques, instead of just one. I still don’t know exactly what advantages such a system might have right off – hand, but what if you employed both a focus fusion laser for solar sailing, as well as an additional onboard focus fusion rocket or ion engine?

Every time your solar sailing craft wandered out of the path of the fusion – powered laser beam, onboard fusion thrusters could also propel it back into the laser beam for additional thrust.

Also, in sailboat sailing, there’s such a thing called tacking, where you can actually propel a craft upwind and against the wind. To do this, the sailboat has to travel in a zig – zag fashion back and forth. In a similar way, onboard fusion engine thrusters might be able to propel a craft back and forth in such a way as to catch the solar wind easier for travelling upwind against it. This way, you would have two methods of propulsion working together and assisting each other.