Have you ever thought, “I would love to take a trip to Mars, but I just don’t have the seven months available in my calendar to get there and another seven months to return to Earth.” Well, good news; thanks to the work of an aerospace startup company in the UK, travel times to Mars could be cut in half if they successfully create a nuclear-powered rocket.
Pulsar Fusion took the challenge that Elon Musk delivered back in 2019 seriously. On July 22, 2019, Musk tweeted that NASA should begin researching a nuclear thermal rocket to navigate the solar system quickly. Fast forward to now, and Pulsar Fusion is working on a vessel that would reach speeds of 500,000 mph, and guess what? That would cut the travel time from Earth to Mars in half.
With what we have to work with now, it would take seven months to get to Mars and the same amount of time to get back. The issue with that is that it would only be safe to stay on Mars for four years because of the radiation levels on the Red Planet. But cutting the travel time in half would give researchers more time to stay and conduct experiments that would make the trip worthwhile. (Assuming they survive the journey).
Say this about Pulsar Fusion; they are ambitious. Here’s what their CEO, Richard Dinan said in a statement recently. “Humanity has a huge need for faster propulsion in our growing space economy, and fusion offers 1,000 times the power of the conventional ion thrusters currently used in orbit. If humans can achieve fusion for energy, then fusion propulsion in space is inevitable.”
Regarding the timetable for a project like this — they hope to have something on the launching pad at the end of the decade. And if that happened, we wouldn’t have to limit ourselves to just visiting Mars, according to Pulsar propulsion engineer Adam Baker.
“[A] fusion rocket could allow us to send people to Mars and bring them back in weeks, not months or years. It could allow us to do round trips to the outer planets of the solar system, to send people to see the rings of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter.”
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