If you have a spacecraft made of a fence of nanorods only a few atoms thick made of carbon nanotubes, it can be miles long and contain that much material in an ion drive to release just a few atoms at a time, and the craft would be so light that the only mass youre moving is the fuel for ionization itself, which means even if the craft is miles long it can constantly accelerate for centuries because of how much fuel it holds, and accelerate fast because the only real mass is the material being ionized.

 

 

Edited August 13, 20205 yr by Strange
Apparently irrelevant video deleted

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Moderator Note

I have removed the video as it did not seem to be related to the contents of your post. If you post a video you need to explain what it contains and how it is relevant to the topic.

 

The video was explaining rapid acceleration. Which is normally atypical for ion drives as ion drives are only the fastest because they accelerate over a longer period of time but if the craft being accelerated by ion propulsion is just a box or net of nanorods only a few atoms across, although the rods could be very long per length as opposed to that atomic width, it's weight will  a single grain of sand and the ion propulsion would be both rapid and sustained for log periods of time for more top speeds after total acceleration approaching or perhaps breaking c I dare say if the ions being shed are in a faster relative time than that of the craft it can experience micro acceleration spurts in less than a planck time