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Re:A Visionary Project Aims for Alpha Centauri, a Star 4.37 ... by skykooler on Tuesday April 12, 2016 @02:44PM (#11482354)
Keep in mind that a single spaceship wouldn't take up the whole beam - for one thing, there would be a bunch of them, and for another, we simply can't focus a laser on something the size of an iPhone from even as far away as the moon. That said, it is still a massive amount of power that needs to be reflected.
Re:A Visionary Project Aims for Alpha Centauri, a Star 4.37 ... by leblancfg on Tuesday April 12, 2016 @02:48PM (#11482388)
I thought this also, but "[...] to keep the beam tightly focused on one probe at a time would require [...]" in the original article points in the opposite direction.