Traveling beyond the Moon is no easy task. In addition to the challenges of space travel itself, the enormous distances we must cover to go to other planets pose a major problem for space agencies, since, in the best case scenario, it would take several years to go to (and return from) Venus or Mars, the planets closest to Earth.
But one company wants us to take much less time to travel to other planets. Pulsar Fusion, a British aerospace company, claims to be building a practical nuclear fusion engine for space rockets that could halve the time it would take us to travel to Mars and other planets.
Once developed, and if everything goes as expected, the rocket could reach speeds in excess of 800,000 kilometers per hour. This is not a trivial figure, if we take into account that the highest speed reached in space by a human being is 39,897 kilometers per hour, by Apollo 10.
The fusion chamber of this 8-meter engine is being assembled at Bletchley, England, and when it is turned on in 2027, it will temporarily become the hottest place in the solar system.
According to Pulsar Fusion researchers, when the final plasma is fired in the chamber it will reach several hundred million degrees, creating temperatures hotter than the Sun itself.
If the Pulsar rocket test were to reach nuclear fusion temperatures in its demonstration to aerospace partners in 2027, the technology would have the potential to cut mission times to Mars in half, reduce the flight time to Saturn from 8 years to 2 and could even allow humanity to leave our solar system.
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