The second half of this century-- fewer than two hundred years after the first flight of the Wrightt brothers-- may see large manned spaceships powered by nuclear fusion and antimatter, according to a NASA study. Such ships could fly to Jupiter in four months, open the whole Solar System to human exploration, and put us on the long road to interstallar travel.
Several breakthroughs are needed before that future is ours, however. The most basic one is being able to produce the required amounts of antimatter. We're nowhere near that yet, but the production rate is improving. One fuel for such fusion reactors could be tritium, which is abundant on the Moon. Mining tritium could become one driver of an early lunar economy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment