Mirror

Mirrors orbit the sun and reflect light to receivers.

They have neighbours. They are close enough to message each other with 10km between 1km² mirrors. They are an internet.

They all have the same distance from the sun.

A full swarm catching all the light of the sun would have an area of S = 4πr²

an orbit of 40 million km r=4E10m

so S = 2E22m²

and if each mirror = 1E6m² then a full swarm has 2E16 mirrors which is 20 quadrillion mirrors. If they are overlapping circles then there's 30 quadrillion.

A 1% swarm = 2E14 mirrors = 200 trillion mirrors.

Ten years is 3.1536E8 seconds which is 634 mirrors a second. Nearly all of those are in the final year.

Before the final year a single railgun is enough with 30 launches a second to escape velocity. The mirror will then tack to its right position.

For the final year you might need to scale up toward a thousand railguns.

The orbit distance of a mirror around the sun is 2πr = 2.5E11m

Solar orbit period = 70 days, speed in solar orbit = 41km/s. The swarm will already be going that fast by being on Mercury, the solar orbit is free.

Escape velocity of Mercury = 4.3km/s