[yetihehe]

Yes, but it's SO impractical as to be unusable (remeber, that E=mc^2, so m=E/c^2, which means m is REALLY small).

Edit: You will get very small amounts of matter from energy. Small amounts of matter will mean very low thrust. Much better use of that amounts of energy is just collecting interstellar medium and accelerating it.

[kiriakasis]

it is worse than impractical actually light is the best propulsion method per energy consumed (as propulsion efficiency depends on speed) it is just that to expel a given mass of light you also need a huge dead weight to emit it.

it would be way more useful to have a method to turn matter into light. this would be a fantastic low power space engine.

(not really an expert, but pretty sure about this)

[Tor3]

Well, to turn matter into light is basically the same as turning matter into energy.. which will, of course, produce a lot of it: E=mc^2

That's really hard though, unless you use antimatter+matter. And then you'll have to produce the antimatter first, of course. And you're back to square one.

[rsynnott]

> And you're back to square one.

Well, not necessarily; if you could efficiently produce and store antimatter, that'd make a hell of an energy storage mechanism, and possibly make interstellar travel feasible. That's a HUGE if, obviously.

[SketchySeaBeast]

That right there is a fuel with a Roland Emmerich scale for potential (nuclear) fallout. Can you imagine trying to sell that to the public? "Combine the worst parts of both Challenger and Chernobyl." The public doesn't really accept normal nuclear power plants.

[monocasa]

Don't do it on earth, do it somewhere else in the solar system.