We have not been able to venture out very far into space. One of the main reasons for that is that space is so
frustratingly massive. Voyager 1 is the fastest man-made thing ever, but 10.5
miles per second is a piffling fraction of the speed of light. Even getting to
one of our nearest neighbours, Mars, would take six to
eight months using conventional spaceship engines.
Ideas like warp drives are still theoretical, and unlikely to be seen within our lifetimes.
However, it might be possible to cut that trip to Mars down to as few as three
months using a form of fusion fuel — “dilithium crystals.” Yep, just
like Star Trek.
It’s not quite the same, of course. In the sci-fi series, the
crystals are a rare substance that the crew spend an inordinate amount of time
searching for, and their engines can use it to travel faster than the speed of
light. This engine, currently under development at the University
of Hunstville by a team working in
collaboration with Boeing, NASA and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, would by
comparison be about twice as fast as the best current technology.
According to Txchnologist, General Electric’s online
tech magazine, this fusion reactor would be fueled by “a few tonnes” of deuterium (a heavy
isotope of hydrogen) and lithium-6 (a stable molecule of lithium) in a
crystalline structure — hence the “dilithium crystal” claim.
When the deuterium and the
lithium-6 are forced together under high pressure they undergo a fusion
reaction — a process which they’re still trying to turn into a net producer of
energy. While fusion isn’t yet a viable fuel source, recent
developments in the field seem to
indicate that we can’t be far away.
The engine, dubbed the “Charger-1 Pulsed Power Generator”, would be
constructed in space along with the rest of the spaceship to avoid the tricky
engineering difficulties of getting all that delicate fusion equipment up
through the atmosphere — just like the International Space Station. Once ready,
the reactor would be engaged, and millions of amps are passed through
super-thin lithium wires in 100 nanosecond pulses — this could generate up to
three terrawatts of power. Those wires vaporise into plasma, which is
collapsed onto the core of deuterium and lithium-6, inducing a fusion reaction.
The energy from that would be forced out the back of the ship in a
so-called “z-pinch” using a “magnetic nozzle”, a component which the team are
also developing. The engine’s potential top speed? Over 100,000km/h. That’s
roughly the same speed at which the Earth orbits the Sun.
Source
