Next giant leap Getting faster spacecraft
SOLVED BY: Nuclear, plasma and chemical propulsion Project Daedalus
Maximum speed: 129,500,000km/h
Type of rocket: Nuclear fusion
Destination: Barnard’s Star
Height: 190m (623ft) This design, proposed in the 1970s by the British Interplanetary Society, uses pellets of deuterium and helium-3 to create a fusion powered stream of plasma. The engine would burn 250 pellets a second for almost four years to accelerate the spacecraft to 12 per cent the speed of light.
VASIMR
Average speed: 180,000km/h
Type of rocket: Plasma
Destination: The inner planets
Height: 1m (3.2ft) The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, or VASIMR, engine uses radio waves to heat and ionise the argon propellant, and a magnetic field to accelerate this through the exhaust nozzle. It has almost no
RS-25 (NASA), Raptor…
