This doesn’t work because the power delivered is more than enough to melt the apparatus mining the planet.
If you direct the sun’s energy onto mercury with an flux as high as that leaving the sun, it will get white hot. This video and the paper it is based on, assume an energy flux a million times that large.
The square of the ratio of the sun’s radius to that of mercury is 200 billion. So when the power directed at disassembling Mercury gets to the total solar output of 4*10^26 Watts/(200 billion)=2*10^18 Watts, you are melting everything on Mercury’ surface. This is 6 orders of magnitude lower than figure 2 of this paper.
It also violates the constant radiance theorem (second law of thermodynamics)
This doesn’t work because the power delivered is more than enough to melt the apparatus mining the planet.
If you direct the sun’s energy onto mercury with an flux as high as that leaving the sun, it will get white hot. This video and the paper it is based on, assume an energy flux a million times that large.
The square of the ratio of the sun’s radius to that of mercury is 200 billion. So when the power directed at disassembling Mercury gets to the total solar output of 4*10^26 Watts/(200 billion)=2*10^18 Watts, you are melting everything on Mercury’ surface. This is 6 orders of magnitude lower than figure 2 of this paper.
It also violates the constant radiance theorem (second law of thermodynamics)
easy fix of reflecting the rays back using a temporary shield and use a strong bubble to make a colony on mercury to mine for you