Late game solar electric propulsion for inner planets

[Strawberry]

Inner planets such as moho tend to be really delta v heavy, but there's a saving grace here. As you get closer to the sun, solar panels become more effective. With the high isp of fusion drives, and nuclear reactors versatility, theres a chance that electric space tugs will be completely made unviable towards the end of the game which would be a shame. Solar electric propulsion spacecraft are highly interesting to design due to the high area needed. Two parts I believe could make solar electric propulsion viable for even late game cargo ships.

First the propulsion. We need a very high isp drive. that also doesn't displace plasma thrusters or dawn engines. There's two electric propulsion designs that can get this very high isp needed to justify these space tugs. Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster have isps up to 100k, and has terrible electrical efficiency. These engines may be too good for ksp2 if we wish fo rthe engines to be balanced however, this type of engines have relatively very high thrust, which could easily displace the plasma thrusters gimmick. I think there's a better candidate for our very high isp electric drive however. Pulsed plasmoid drives create a torus of ball lightning and then shoot them down its nozzle. These also get isps to 100k and don't necessarily have as high of thrust compared to MPD drives. For in game stats, these would be essentially souped up dawn engines, similar thrusts, but way higher isps in the ballpark of the 50k range, their main downside would be there terrible electrical efficiency, making these things powerhogs.

Now we need a late game source of power, this one is simple. There are many designs for solar panels that are incredibly light weight, there's one main downside though, these tend to be incredibly flimsy, meaning that you would have to construct these in space. Procedural solar panels would be the clear solution here, these would have incredible energy to weight ratios, but with two main downsides. These things would have lower kw/m^3 ratio compared to standard solar panels, meaning that you need much higher volume. The main downside though is these things would disintegrate in atmosphere/with high thrusts. This would practically necessitate orbital construction, making you need very large arrays of solar panels.

[SolarAdmiral]

55 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster have isps up to 100k, and has terrible electrical efficiency. 

I expect the plasma engines we're getting will either be MPDs or Vasmir (Also magnetoplasma). So the only thing to be seen is if we will get solar panels large enough to be used to easily power them.

[Vl3d]

22 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

I expect the plasma engines we're getting will either be MPDs or Vasmir (Also magnetoplasma). So the only thing to be seen is if we will get solar panels large enough to be used to easily power them.

Where we're going there's no light.

[SolarAdmiral]

9 hours ago, Vl3d said:

Where we're going there's no light.

Strawberry was talking about using them specifically to go to inner planets. But yes normally you'd run MPDs on nuclear power.

[Strawberry]

14 hours ago, SolarAdmiral said:

I expect the plasma engines we're getting will either be MPDs or Vasmir (Also magnetoplasma). So the only thing to be seen is if we will get solar panels large enough to be used to easily power them.

MPDs were in one of the images used as inspiration and VASIMR was explicitly listed as inspiration as well. However Im hoping they focus more on the high thrust part and less of the high isp part for the plasma thruster, and they have a separate very high low thrust isp electric engine.