I found an article on Geekwire.com that just rearranged my mind… I read so many SciFi books when I was younger that talked about these “fantastic” space travel concepts like solar sails, ion drives, and fusion engines. Like most people would, I figured that they were more on the fiction side of it than the science side. Turns out that I was very wrong about that! The article details six technologies that come straight out of those old SciFi books but are actually being researched and created today… Amazing!
Check this out from the Geekwire article:
Ion drives: These are the engines that provide the “impulse power” for starships on “Star Trek,” but the technology is science fact, not fiction. The current generation of solar-powered ion thrusters provide only enough push as a piece of paper weighing down on your hand — but they figure prominently in NASA’s Dawn mission to Ceres and Vesta and the future mission to a near-Earth asteroid. Aerojet Rocketdyne’s Redmond office plays a key role in electric propulsion development.
See the next page for another mind-blower…
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