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New fusion rocket design could cut Mars trip to under 4 months
It seems too good to be true, but UK-based Pulsar Fusion has revealed its new Sunbird self-contained nuclear rocket tug that uses a fusion propulsion engine that could reduce a trip to Mars to under four months and Pluto to under four years.
On the one hand, it seemed to be a very serious company producing a solid line of electric space propulsion systems as well as a hybrid liquid/solid rocket engine and space-based nuclear fission reactors, along with getting some serious development money from the British government. That may sound a bit like the ion thrusters and variants used on today's deep space missions and ones that Pulsar Fusion builds, but there's a huge difference in scale, like comparing a Dyson ducted room fan to a Rolls-Royce Ultrafan jet engine. The Sunbird Migratory Transfer Vehicle, as the complete package is called, is a modular system that's designed to act as a tug rather than an integrated rocket engine that's part of a spacecraft.
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