How large would such a construction need to be to accelerate 100 tons at 1g? Maybe someone could do the math for us. I assume it's on the order of dozens/hundreds of miles long per dimension and would be completely infeasible compared to just using an engine with high thrust to begin with.
[Edit]
Here's some rough math.
From wiki, assume a typical ion engine can produce 150mN of thrust from 4,000 W of power input.
Using a space station solar panel as an example of solar collection in space, each space station solar panel is 420 square meters in size and produces 31,000 W of power.
One space station solar panel would then provide (31,000 W / 4,000 W) * 150 mN = 1,162 mN, or .001162 N of force.
The force required to accelerate 100 tons at 1g requires 996,402 Newtons of force.
To generate that much force, you would then need 996,402 N / .001162 N = 857,488,812 space station solar panels worth of power.
As one space station solar panel is 420 square meters, then that requires 857,488,812 * 420 square meters = 360,145,301,040 square meters of solar panels.
Assuming square construction, each side would need to be 600,121 meters, or 373 miles long.
I assure you, just using high thrust engines makes infinitely more sense than building a pv-based ship scaled up so far that the ship's dimensions are nearly 400 miles long on each edge. At least for any time soon ..
Why would you need to accelerate anything at 1 g? That's a ridiculously high acceleration for getting to Mars. What matters more is the total delta-V, and if it can deliver it in time short compared to the transit time to Mars.
High Isp solar electric systems would not exploit the Oberth effect (likely they would start in high Earth orbit) so they don't have a high acceleration need from that.
If you want to accelerate to 15 km/s in 1 week, that's 2.5 milligees.
Accelerating/decelerating at 1G the entire journey would be the perfect scenario. Not only that would be the shortest travel time, but it would maintain gravity inside the ship all the time. If this is not the ultimate goal being worked towards, then we may as well just give up now. Nuclear is where it's at - it's the most efficient weight to power ratio generation known to man.
It's about as realistic as propelling the vehicle with unicorn farts. In particular, the kinds of nuclear propulsion being discussed in this thread could not do it. Solid core nuclear thermal rockets using hydrogen have an Isp of about 1000, so they could accelerate a vehicle at 1 gee for less than an hour.
The power/weight ratio of nuclear rockets actually sucks, compared to chemical rockets. Conveying heat through a solid/fluid interface is awkward and slow compared to just making it in situ by combustion.
[Edit]
Here's some rough math.
From wiki, assume a typical ion engine can produce 150mN of thrust from 4,000 W of power input.
Using a space station solar panel as an example of solar collection in space, each space station solar panel is 420 square meters in size and produces 31,000 W of power.
One space station solar panel would then provide (31,000 W / 4,000 W) * 150 mN = 1,162 mN, or .001162 N of force.
The force required to accelerate 100 tons at 1g requires 996,402 Newtons of force.
To generate that much force, you would then need 996,402 N / .001162 N = 857,488,812 space station solar panels worth of power.
As one space station solar panel is 420 square meters, then that requires 857,488,812 * 420 square meters = 360,145,301,040 square meters of solar panels.
Assuming square construction, each side would need to be 600,121 meters, or 373 miles long.
I assure you, just using high thrust engines makes infinitely more sense than building a pv-based ship scaled up so far that the ship's dimensions are nearly 400 miles long on each edge. At least for any time soon ..