[orionrising]

laser sail spacecraft is not a new idea...

[Steely Tom]

I’m not all-in on the faster-than-light part.

[Vince Ferrer]

The design is real but the author is a nitwit.

[dinodino]

I don’t see how he expects to go faster than light.

[taxcontrol]

Cool idea but I’m thinking the G-forces might be a bit much. It is what 55 MILLION kilometers to Mars at a minimum.

[ThomasThomas]

Parking and checking in your luggage has always been the hardest part.

[CMB_polarization]

They just have to figure out how to slow it down and stop at the destination.

[RC one]

OK, who wants to volunteer to man the wafer thin space craft traveling at 1/4th the speed of light to the planet Mars whish is about 33-249 million miles away from earth? anybody? Anyone?

[Larry Lucido]

Domino’s pizza deliver to Mars is now possible!

[Lazamataz]

This time, however, he identified the use of high-powered lasers to propel wafer-thin spacecrafts to the Red Planet faster than the speed of light.

Nope.

[Pearls Before Swine]

30 minutes? “Really snaps yer head back!”

Wouldn’t that involve a lot of g’s on both ends of the trip (accelerating and decelerating)?

[shibumi]

The new technology comes with a decidedly "retro" look -

The problem of deceleration will be handled by slowly circling the landing spot while the crew keeps a watchful eye out for really big lizards.

[Disambiguator]

he identified the use of high-powered lasers to propel wafer-thin spacecrafts to the Red Planet faster than the speed of light

This reminds me of something, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

[ronnietherocket3]

wafer-thin spacecrafts

So you would get a computer to the destination, but nothing else.

faster than the speed of light

No, just no. The author should have run the article by someone with a degree in physics. This is not a proposal to get to the destination faster than the speed of light. Physics (at present) has stated this is impossible. In addition, one could not use light to propel something faster than light. Once the object has reached light speed, there would be no momentum transfer from light to the object.

As an example, on the eventual upper end, a full-scale (50-70 GW) DE-STAR 4

While not a stupid concept, DE-STAR is just a proposal. Also a 50GW laser is huge.

This means that while space travel takes 30 minutes, it could equal a decade here on Earth.

The proposal is to fly an object from Earth to Mars in 30 minutes. Whatever relativistic time scale that is in, it would take less than 9 months on Earth as that is the current amount of time.

[Pollster1]

“Message reads: 'Houston, be advised: Phillip Lubin is a steely-eyed missile man.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian (edited)

[Pontiac]

“As a proposed precursor to interstellar travel, Lubin's concept has been met with a bit of skepticism due to some perceived flaws. For example, there is the question about deceleration once the low-mass probe approaches Mars

What good does it do you to get to Mars in 30 minutes if you are going to just sail right on by?

Lasers may be able to accelerate you to 25% of the speed of light but there is no laser on Mars to slow you down and no rocket on the spacecraft is going to do the job.

[LibWhacker]

propel wafer-thin spacecrafts to the Red Planet faster than the speed of light...

Discredits the entire article. Either the UC physics professor doesn't know what he's talking about (not likely), or the author doesn't, and nothing he says can be trusted.

[ctdonath2]

“propel wafer-thin spacecrafts to the Red Planet faster than the speed of light.”

Aaaaand, sane people stop reading right there.

[Da Coyote]

Faster than light speed?

From a real physicist?

Sounds more like something from a Climate Change “scientist” to me.

However, methinks the reporter may have pulled a Hillary or two....after all, both reporters and the Hillbeast are of equivalent technical intelligence.

[PCPOET7]

I wish I could be around another hundred years. when I hear about scientific speculation like this because I know that the benefits of this wont be there for another hundred years.