Wired Magazine throws cold water on the notion that we’ll ever get to the stars. Why? … it’s too expensive & takes too long with conventional propulsion. And with exotic but plausible drives like Daedalus, the engineering isn’t there yet. And then there’s alternative & breakthrough propulsion systems that have the problem of being fictional, er, we mean to say that the physics isn’t there yet.

But for those who enjoy a challenge such as working on hypothetical interstellar space drives (propulsion without propellant), here’s a handy summary of what NASA has considered thus far…the chart is from document NASA/TM—2004-213406 entitled Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project: Project Management Methods:

…and at the moment NASA’s no. 1 candidate for achieving exotic propulsion seems to be the dark matter drive which proposes to use presumably ubiquitous dark matter as a source of reaction mass.

Rocket Scientists Say We’ll Never Reach the Stars - Wired, August 19 2008

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Aerospace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.