NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/10/nasa_fusion_engine_fast_mars_trip/

by kristianp • 13 years ago

162 158 13 years ago

theregister.co.uk

mschuster914• 13 years ago

I really hope this works out! But the real question is: could this be used for atmospheric thrusters on Earth?

rurounijones• 13 years ago

Based on the amount of thrust it produces for the weight of the machine, not a chance.

Only works in an environment with very low friction. i.e. space

mschuster914• 13 years ago

What is the thrust it generates, anyway? The article and the NASA homepage didn't state a value

james4k• 13 years ago

Why not? Aren't rocket-fueled thrusters much heavier due to the weight of the fuel alone?

lutusp28• 13 years ago

Something is rotten in Denmark. If this project achieves a sustained fusion reaction as claimed, that represents a huge breakthrough, and not just for space propulsion, but for the general topic of fusion power.

If it succeeds, it would sweep away all present fusion reaction prototype methods, including the well-tested but so far ineffective( * ) tokamak and laser-fusion approaches.

* By "ineffective" I mean none of them has reached the break-even point, that point where more energy is released than is required to initiate the reaction in the first place.

The article doesn't say whether the prototype device has actually succeeded in igniting a sustained fusion reaction. If it does, it would quickly move beyond its present goal of producing a more effective source of space acceleration and would answer some longstanding questions about fusion power itself.

The fact that this isn't being discussed leads to my statement above -- something is rotten in Denmark. Either the project is overselling its possibilities, and/or it can't really achieve fusion break-even.

Speaking hypothetically, if the device could produce a sustained fusion reaction with substantial power, it could be scaled up and used to propel a spacecraft to Mars in much less than 30 days. Assuming a sustained acceleration of 1 g, the hypothetical craft could accelerate for 1/2 the trip, turn around and decelerate for the other 1/2 of the distance, arriving at Mars with zero velocity. Apart from minimizing travel time, this hypothetical profile would prevent the bone loss that accompanies sustained time at zero-g.

Making the above assumptions, and assuming that Mars is at a close approach point in its orbit, the travel time could be as little as ... wait for it .. 50 hours.

Derivation:

1. Distance d (meters) for acceleration a (m/s^2) and time t (seconds): d = 1/2 a t^2

2. Time t for distance d and acceleration a, assuming 1/2 acceleration and 1/2 deceleration: t = 2 sqrt(d/a)

3. Result for Mars close approach (7.834e10 meters) and acceleration of 1 g: 49.64 hours.

Again, speaking very hypothetically. I still think something is rotten in Denmark.

ars10• 13 years ago

It's not continuous, it's pulses. But that doesn't actually matter, attach this thing to a big wheel and pulse it to run a generator. Or a few of them pulsing in sequence.

But I wonder if the radiation exhaust might be to high to be practical on earth.

arethuza6• 13 years ago

The fusion products are presumably fairly hot - so why not use them to heat water and drive a steam turbine generator combination?

[NB This is in reply to the idea of using whirling fusion generators as a means of generating power, not part of the discussion on using it as spacecraft propulsion!]

abdullahkhalids2• 13 years ago

"It's very scalable; we can achieve fusion at a much smaller scale," he said. "We could run the designed engine off 200KW of solar panels, which is about the same power as generated by the panels around the International Space Station"

So this is hot fusion, not cold. Hot fusion has been around for a long time. In fact I remember a couple of high school kids made a hot fusion device once.

arethuza6• 13 years ago

My understanding is that "hot" fusion is actually fairly easy - it's generating a surplus of energy from fusion[*] outside of a nuclear weapon that is the tricky part.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

[Note: Typically in most H-bomb designs most of the energy still comes from fission - the fast neutrons from the fusion in the secondary igniting fission of the DU tamper round the secondary].

lutusp28• 13 years ago

> Hot fusion has been around for a long time.

Only in the stars and in thermonuclear weapons. It has not been achieved in a break-even sense anywhere else, in spite of decades of research. Many very large projects are dedicated to achieving it, including the National Ignotion Facility:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

The linked article shows that, in spite of vast amounts of money being spent, the project has yet to achieve break-even (i.e. produce more power than required to start the reaction).

> In fact I remember a couple of high school kids made a hot fusion device once.

No, that did not happen. It's an urban myth.

chrisfarms• 13 years ago

I guess the point is less about the fusion method being efficient (and getting past break-even) but more about propulsion. ie. for 200KW of input do you get more propulsion from initiating a fusion reaction than using an ion ejection method.

Their aim is to move a heavy object with as little fuel as possible not necessarily produce perfect fusion. (although obviously that would be nice for everyone!)

lutusp28• 13 years ago

> I guess the point is less about the fusion method being efficient (and getting past break-even) but more about propulsion.

But "break-even" means yielding more energy than is required to start the reaction. Obviously anything less than break-even is not worth having -- a chemical rocket would be more efficient.

> Their aim is to move a heavy object with as little fuel as possible not necessarily produce perfect fusion.

This misses the point that present laboratory fusion reactions require more power than they release. It's not a question of "perfect fusion" but any fusion that has a net positive energy yield.

DennisP• 13 years ago

The same guy (John Slough) started Helion Energy, which is attempting to build a power-producing fusion reactor. Last I heard they had a 1/3 scale device with promising results, and needed $20 million for a full-scale test. But he got funding for the rocket first.

The rocket project may actually be easier. It only pulses once per minute, just runs for three days, and doesn't have to deal with the economic considerations of a practical power plant.

Incidentally, Helion is not the only alternative fusion project in the works. Others include Sandia's MagLIF, Lockheed's recently-announced project, Tri-Alpha, General Fusion, Focus Fusion, and IEC/polywell.

lutusp28• 13 years ago

> Last I heard they had a 1/3 scale device with promising results, and needed $20 million for a full-scale test.

Research takes time, the potential payoff is huge, but in the final analysis, the fusion reaction has to produce more power than it requires. It has to achieve what's called "break-even".

A fusion reaction with a power gain < 1 is endothermic -- its temperature is less than that of its power source. A fusion generator by definition produces more power than it requires for initiation -- it has a power gain > 1, and it is exothermic.

> Incidentally, Helion is not the only alternative fusion project in the works. Others include Sandia's MagLIF, Lockheed's recently-announced project, Tri-Alpha, General Fusion, Focus Fusion, and IEC/polywell.

This is a good example of long-shot science, applied research. None of these ideas show very much promise, but the potential payoff is so big that (IMHO) the research money is well-spent.

wazoox• 13 years ago

> Something is rotten in Denmark. If this project achieves a sustained fusion reaction as claimed, that represents a huge breakthrough, and not just for space propulsion, but for the general topic of fusion power.

Achieving fusion in a tokamak or with lasers has been a solved problem for a couple of decades.

The problem with fusion power is generating more energy from the fusion than consumed to power the lasers or tokamak.

There is no such problem here as I understand it; the system isn't supposed to sustain itself from fusion, but instead will rely on solar panels or some other energy source to power the fusion reactor.

lutusp28• 13 years ago

> Achieving fusion in a tokamak or with lasers has been a solved problem for a couple of decades.

I should have been more clear -- I mean sustained fusion generation, meaning a net energy gain over that required to start the reaction in the first place. That hasn't been achieved.

> There is no such problem here as I understand it; the system isn't supposed to sustain itself from fusion ...

Not according to the NASA documents (see below). If that were true, there would be no point in using the system. If the fusion reaction produces less power than it requires, the designers would be better off using the source electrical power to drive an ion thruster.

The claim being made is that the fusion scheme creates more power than is required to start it -- by using electrical power to initiate a fusion reaction that produces more power than it requires. If this were not true, the amount of converted solar energy described in the project (i.e. 200 KW) is not enough to propel the relatively massive spacecraft to Mars in 30 days using other methods.

Here's the evidence:

Link: http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2012_phaseII...

Title: "The Fusion Driven Rocket: Nuclear Propulsion through Direct Conversion of Fusion Energy"

Quote: "an in-depth analysis of the rocket design and spacecraft integration as well as mission architectures enabled by the FDR need to be performed. Fulfilling these three elements form the major tasks to be completed in the proposed Phase II study. A subscale, laboratory liner compression test facility will be assembled with sufficient liner kinetic energy (~ 0.5 MJ) to reach fusion breakeven conditions." [emphasis added]

Which brings us back to square one. If this project were to succeed, it would instantly replace the existing approaches (i.e. tokamak and laser inertial confinement) as the most promising candidate for large-scale fusion power generation.

As I said before, something is rotten in Denmark -- why isn't this project being described as a candidate for earthly fusion power generation, given that it must achieve break-even to accomplish its mission?

moron4hire2• 13 years ago

it's not about having net energy gain, it's about converting electrical and nuclear energy into kinetic energy.

lutusp28• 13 years ago

> it's not about having net energy gain ...

That's not what the NASA documents say, the documents that describe the project:

http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2012_phaseII...

Without a net energy gain, the project would be better off using an ion thruster, which has the advantage of already existing and being quite efficient (but with a power gain < 1).

jff3• 13 years ago

It's not a sustained reaction. It's just a bunch of short fusion reactions, one after another. We've been capable of short, uncontrolled fusion reactions for decades--it's just that, being bombs, we didn't have much luck generating electricity from them. A hydrogen bomb uses a relatively small quantity of conventional explosives to start a reaction which ultimately releases orders of magnitude more energy than the original input. This engine claims to use a small input of electrical energy to trigger a reaction which releases a lot of energy. Then, much like a car getting blown off the road by a nuclear test, they just position their ship near this reaction and get shoved away.

The proposal specifically says they will not convert the energy to electricity, but will use the reaction directly for thrust.

vectorjohn7• 13 years ago

Actually hydrogen bombs don't use conventional explosives. They use fission. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon (a hypothetical bomb).

danmaz74• 13 years ago

Also speaking very hypothetically, why do you suppose that all the input electrical power is wasted for the propulsion goal? Each fusion mini-explosion will have a total energy that is the sum of the input (ignition) energy and the fusion itself, not just that of the fusion.

Edit: This would mean that the thrust could be higher than the electrical input power even below break-even for the controlled fusion. If you only consider the electrical input, you could have a >1 ratio for the electrical energy/kinetic energy conversion (thanks to the fusion).

lutusp28• 13 years ago

> Also speaking very hypothetically, why do you suppose that all the input electrical power is wasted for the propulsion goal? Each fusion mini-explosion will have a total energy that is the sum of the input (ignition) energy and the fusion itself, not just that of the fusion.

Yes, technically true, but consider this hypothetical scenario:

1. A power source, let's say 1000 watts, can be used for any purpose, or can be used to heat a fusion plasma.

2. A fusion reactor requires 1000 watts to sustain fusion but delivers 250 watts of fusion power.

3. The total power in the system is now 1,250 watts.

4. But that total power is not available for external uses. 1000 watts of it must perpetually be applied only to the task of heating the plasma.

5. That leaves 250 watts for other uses.

That means the fusion reaction uses more power than it produces, only 250 watts is available for other purposes, and there is no remedy except to not use the fusion reactor.

That's why break-even is an essential precondition for this project's viability.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

The FDR is one of only ten projects to get Stage Two funding from the program. This $600,000 award will provide the proof-of-concept FDR system over the next 18 months, and a working spacecraft would be ready as soon as 2020, Pancokti predicted – but if NASA wanted to throw money at the project, this timescale could be cut.

There's a lot of people on HN who could double that budget without blinking, he hinted.

lifeisstillgood4• 13 years ago

Reading lutusp post, anyone on HN who got sufficient funds to double the budget, would also have learnt to look very closely at extraordinary claims with only ordinary evidence.

Be nice if it was true, and one day I am sure it will be (I mean the Sun DES this all the time and not even a single Phd was involved)

vectorjohn7• 13 years ago

I'm not saying this FDR is guaranteed to work or be the best idea, but I'm pretty sure lutusp is trolling or something. He is clearly not understanding any of the issues. Repeatedly he talks of needing to create a steady reaction, and talks about needing to meet the same requirements of a fusion electric generator. Neither of these things is proposed by the FDR project. It is pulsed, and it generates only kinetic energy (much like an H-bomb, relatively old and proven technology). Further, he talks of ion thrusters as an alternative, which would take months to get to Mars, whereas this is talking about 30 days.

nnq• 13 years ago

Maybe I misunderstand everything, but why couldn't such a system be use on Earth as fusion power plant? (it seems to produce more energy than is consumed to produce the fuel, right?)

lutusp28• 13 years ago

> Maybe I misunderstand everything, but why couldn't such a system be use on Earth as fusion power plant?

That was my question also (see my other post in this thread) -- if they really achieve fusion break-even (i.e. produce more power than they require to start the reaction) then they have done something that many decades of fusion research have so far failed to achieve. If their device can really do what they claim, it has implications far beyond the described project.

lifeisstillgood4• 13 years ago

I am not validating these sources but suggest that there is a known approach that collapses aluminium over a core deuterium tritium. It is not self sustaining, but it generates some net positive energy, thus enough I guess to throw a pellet out the door

http://www.alternative-energy-action-now.com/general-fusion....

gliese13373• 13 years ago

Because a powerplant has one extra required component that a rocket doesn't- convert the reaction energy into electricity. Every known, engineered method doing that that we currently have is sufficiently inefficient that more energy is lost in conversion than the fusion reaction produces, which is why you get less usable energy out that you put in. It's easy to make energy from fusion, it's hard to get that energy in a usable form, which is what we mean by "break even". A rocket is not subject to that constraint, because the raw reaction products themselves, without conversion to any other form, are exactly what a rocket wants anyway.

dchichkov2• 13 years ago

Love to watch (and support with my money) all these low cost space propulsion projects. This kickstarter project http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2027072188/plasma-jet-el... was particularly amazing to watch. Best donation / entertainment money spent ever. And I hope B612 foundation would result in some great fun as well ;) Or not :)

And another thing. And advice for kids looking for summer internships. Don't do these 'iPhone games' startups. Try something real, like NASA or Lockheed, or whatever. If you good, who knows, maybe a few lines of your code will have a chance flying into space.

quahada2• 13 years ago

Former aerospace, current iPhone app guy here. Each career path has its pros & cons. Working at a place like NASA or Lockheed lets you work on some very cool projects, often times you are working on some project that never sees the light of day (canceled due to budget cuts and what not). Also, the bureaucracy at large aerospace organizations can be stifling.

Having said that, Space X seems like it offers the best of both worlds.

dchichkov2• 13 years ago

I should have been slightly more precise, the advice was specifically about taking an internship in aerospace as a kid. I don't have any advice about having a career in aerospace industry... Haven't had one. I only had a short internship as a high school student at aero/space R&D company back in Russia. But that [aero/space R&D, not Russia ;)], I can highly recommend.

I think actually, a more general advice is to take an internship in any high tech industry area in which a cost of software or design failures is very, very high.

rdl6• 13 years ago

Arguably we've had "fusion drive" for spaceships ever since Project Orion. Very simply, build a ship with a big shield in the back, throw nuclear bombs out behind the ship, detonate, the shock and radiation hits the plate (some ablates, but it's still fairly study and safe), and some kind of shock absorber system pushes the spaceship forward. Repeat. You can feasibly get to 0.10c with this, using 1960s technology, and really big ships.

I think most of the earlier designs involved fission bombs, but there's no reason you couldn't use fusion bombs, and maybe even some kind of laser or magnetic means of initiating fusion. Which seems to be exactly what UW is talking about here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...

A lot of the engineering and physiological problems of a Mars mission go away if you have the ability to move huge masses between Earth and Mars fast. You can skip the low energy launch windows and just go for a short on-Mars trip, rather than needing to loiter for a year or two between windows. You don't need to worry about supplies in space and radiation issues for a year-long transit. etc.

n0mad01• 13 years ago

and you think that getting x nuclear bombs into orbit is safe?

and even when all bombs go into space without incidents, having them there until start is no risk neither?

i think something more conventional would be better, even when less economically ...

arethuza6• 13 years ago

I don't think anyone thinks it's a particularly practical idea these days - for the reasons you identify.

However, it seems a bit of a shame that for all of the 2000+ nuclear weapons tests and tens of thousands of nuclear weapons built we never did anything as constructive as flying an Orion.

daliusd2• 13 years ago

Well, combustion engine in my car is not very conventional either by XIX century standards. Maybe we should ride horses?

Why you make assumption that bombs must be delivered to space vs constructed there from resources mined in asteroids?

ewolf• 13 years ago

Why wouldn't it be safe? Nuclear bombs don't just explode by accident or when they are hit by something, they need to be deliberately triggered, so I wouldn't estimate the danger of this to be very big.

Furthermore, nuclear weapons have been sent to space before, both for regular long-range missiles and for EMP-like tests.

jerf• 13 years ago

As others point out, nuclear bombs do not spontaneously go off. If they were that easy to accidentally trigger, building them would be no big deal and we wouldn't be talking about nuclear vs. non-nuclear countries to this day.

Furthermore, everything is space is already a weapon. The very act of being in space and not falling back to Earth means you are loaded up with enough kinetic energy to be going several miles per second. You don't need nuclear bombs to be a weapon in space, a bucket of sand is a deadly weapon. Militarization of space refers to things other than merely putting "big bombs" in space, where they are surprisingly useless. (Even the EMP is less useful than you'd think; space is already a sea of radiation so everything up there is already hardened against it.)

podperson2• 13 years ago

Surely that's like saying we've had nuclear submarines since Jules Verne wrote "20,000 leagues under the sea" insofar as Project Orion was little more than science fiction and didn't involve fusion drives ("atomic bomba" would be fission).

(Verne's Nautilus was powered by primitive batteries.)

mchouza5• 13 years ago

Project Orion was much more than science fiction (http://www.scribd.com/doc/28668567/Nuclear-Pulse-Space-Vehic...) though it was much less than operational. Very big Orion spaceships would have used fusion explosions (http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/321.jvn.fall02/Dyso...), but not the relatively small ones that were subjected to detailed analysis.

opminion3• 13 years ago

By the way, it's worth pointing out, to those who want to make a judgement on the reasons project Orion could not be implemented nowadays, that nuclear detonations are effectively a modern tabu.

This tabu is effective, has proven extremely useful (no detonations of nukes in a war since 1945) and thus cannot be considered the sign of a scientifically ignorant society.

Having said that, Orion would be quite cool.

panacea• 13 years ago

Do you mean 'taboo', as in something that's considered off-limits due to cultural sensitivities? (Wondering out loud if the etymology is similar to voodoo and related suspicious stuff)

rdl6• 13 years ago

We've had hundreds (or thousands, if you count sub-design-yield) detonations since 1945, including several in space (Hardtack Teak and Orange, and USSR equivalents).

And lots of them were for purely posturing purposes, with little scientific or direct weapons-testing value.

The US probably could have pulled off something like Orion in the 1990s or maybe even today, since there's not a direct cold war threat. Domestic politics probably kill it, though, but if it were branded as "nuclear pulse drive" with sub-10kT pulses, it might be possible.

duaneb• 13 years ago

Then we've basically been on the moon for centuries now. Just because we can theoretically build something with known physics doesn't mean we have e.g. the material knowledge to actually construct the spaceship. Also, there's this issue of slowing down, and of how to get that spaceship with that much fuel out of the atmosphere, and how to get that spaceship back.... I would say we have a long way to go before claiming we "have" a fusion drive in a spaceship.

lifeformed• 13 years ago

It's pretty much like rocket jumping.

hcarvalhoalves2• 13 years ago

> Arguably we've had "fusion drive" for spaceships ever since Project Orion. Very simply, build a ship with a big shield in the back, throw nuclear bombs out behind the ship, detonate, the shock and radiation hits the plate (some ablates, but it's still fairly study and safe), and some kind of shock absorber system pushes the spaceship forward. Repeat. You can feasibly get to 0.10c with this, using 1960s technology, and really big ships.

I never understood how the blast alone can propel the ship. Don't you also need to eject mass from a nozzle to move forward - in which case, it's just like a regular jet, you just replace part of the fuel with nukes?

cma• 13 years ago

Part of the mass in the fuel in the bomb is converted to photons; photons are massless but carry momentum.

Groxx• 13 years ago

Nozzles are basically just a more efficient version of this, since they don't waste as much energy which would escape out the sides (it's instead contributing to internal pressure, which pushes everything out the open end more quickly). Burning rocket fuel expands it rapidly, which is essentially all a bomb does. The downside to a nozzle is that you have to keep the internal pressure low enough that it doesn't rupture. This is far less of a problem with an Orion-style ship.

Think of an explosion. They produce moving walls of compressed air that flings stuff around. Though this is just because it's in air, it's a lot of energy. The same amount of energy is still being released if you blow it up anywhere else. (ignoring bonus 'free' energy from e.g. burning the air itself)

Take the explosion out of air, and you still have a 'shock wave' from the material which made up the bomb, and electrons / photons / whatever else materialized from that much energy being released in a tiny space. And it's all moving very quickly.

When it hits your ship's back-end, it gives it a kick. Obviously far less than the total energy released (whatever % of the sphere of expanding energy which your ship covers), but still something. If the explosion is big enough, or close enough, you are still talking an immense 'kick'. And since you have no relatively-fragile nozzle (just an arbitrarily big, thick wall), the force can be many many times greater than a normal rocket.

So to make it survivable, you probably need a big ship and some kind of impact-absorber to take the shock out of it, and / or lots of small bombs that won't kill everyone due to acceleration. Or just get rid of the squishy humans and crank up the proximity / bomb size to whatever you feel like.

lifeisstillgood4• 13 years ago

Hmm, a little goggling gives a hint this may not be BS after all.

I am unclear on the exact methods, but there appears to be existing research into generating a plasma "pinch" via compression of aluminium around a core of detrinium-tritium. This generates a massive magnetic-flux (which seems to be a result of actual fusion during the compression) and if it is held in a magnetic cage with an out at the back, you have propulsion.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinch_(plasma_physics) (2)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compres... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compres...

omegant3• 13 years ago

What kind of residues leaves that kind of engine? is it gas or solid? because small solids at that speed will surely make the earth orbit in a quite dangerous shooting range in no time. What is the expected coherence of a gas cloud flying that fast? Is it going to be dangerous? or will simply dissolve in to space. Would the material expelled fly away from earth orbit?. Sorry, too many questions..

kristianp• 13 years ago

My guess would be that the products would be gases. Pinching a little ball of deteurium would make it very hot, and vaporise the metal that squishes it.

omegant3• 13 years ago

Are gases dangerous at 30km/sec?. I mean, of course they are, but are they still dangerous in space?. Will the cloud keep more or less cohesive or will it disperse?

ars10• 13 years ago

Even if it was solid, it's moving at 30 km/s - it won't stay in earth orbit - it won't even stay in solar orbit.

But it's not a solar - way way too hot. It's a gas, mainly helium, and it's highly charged so it will just join the solar wind (which is moving at 400km/s).

iwwr• 13 years ago

This is very early, preliminary research. Actual fruits of a manned or otherwise fusion rocket to Mars may be decades ahead. Even at NASA's slow pace they could get there by the 2030es (or 2020es if they listen to Zubrin).

Edit: at 150 tons payload for low orbit (early estimate) it's not exactly easy to launch. If you can do that on a man-rated rocket you're all ready for Mars on just chemical propulsion (in a Mars-direct/Mars-semidirect scenario).

quahada2• 13 years ago

Not even the Saturn V could launch 150 tons into LEO (though it could come close). No current rocket even comes close.

Aardwolf• 13 years ago

Alright count me in for this trip. At least if it includes a return ticket :)

blisterpeanuts• 13 years ago

If it's in the 2040s or 2050s, and I'm into my dotage and pushing 100, I'll spring for a one-way. They can fill my return slot with someone younger, or bring home an extra 150lbs of Mars rocks.

jbattle• 13 years ago

The once a minute firing of the engines feels like it'd be a very unpleasant sensation - I wonder what the momentary acceleration experienced would be.

Also - this craft sounds perfectly suited for laser-transmitted power (rather than carrying a large solar array) - have one or more earth-orbiting lasers beaming energy to the craft. Though I'm not sure if we have the technology today to aim & focus a laser at that range (?)

jes5199• 13 years ago

I saw George Dyson give a talk about the Orion project - where they were planning to set off conventional atomic bombs in a series to propel spacecraft - and he had found a paper that had done the math and claimed that the crew of the spacecraft would only feel low-frequency sound, like the bass at a loud rock concert.

elboru• 13 years ago

Columbus took almost one month to pass through the Atlantic Ocean, who could imagine something like this even one century ago?

Vivtek2• 13 years ago

From the article: Given the tight financial strictures of the US government this is unlikely

This is what pisses me off about the last decade. Plenty of money to bail out the richest people the planet has ever seen. Plenty of money to kill brown people. Making a fusion drive? Making sure we all have medicine? Sheesh, we're not made of money!

NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

Related Stories