Nuclear time to mars free#

Nuclear time to mars free#

Controlled fusion could power the entire planet with energy free of carbon emissions and with negligible radioactive waste, but it’s proved so difficult to pull off that a commercial reactor won’t see the light of day for decades to come at the very soonest. Nonetheless, the folks at PSS think they might be able to build a fusion-powered rocket motor much sooner than that, and they may be onto something.

It’s the energy source that makes stars shine and that plasma physicists have been trying to tame for more than 50 years - so far, despite ever more gigantic and expensive machines, in vain. This team of a half-dozen or so scientists and engineers is determined to send human beings to Mars, launch robotic probes to the outer solar system, send missions to Alpha Centauri and more, and do it all with rockets powered by nuclear fusion. The company’s ambitions, by contrast, certainly do - but those sound so crazy that you have to wonder if they’re serious. For one thing, the PSS offices, a few rooms in a nondescript building in nondescript Plainsboro, N.J., right above the Sugar and Sunshine Bakery, don’t exactly suggest the imminent conquest of the final frontier. Follow first, it’s hard to know whether to take the company known as Princeton Satellite Systems (PSS) seriously.