Wild Fusion Rocket In Development Gets Hotter Than The Sun And Screams At 500K MPH

Faster space travel has been the holy grail of space agencies for decades and a UK-based aerospace company says it might have a viable solution in the form of nuclear fusion. If all goes well, a working fusion prototype could happen as soon as 2027.

Pulsar Fusion, a UK aerospace startup is claiming that it's in the process of building a nuclear fusion rocket engine that could slash travel times between Earth and Mars (and beyond) by half, reaching speeds in excess of 500,000 mph. When the supposed rocket is fired, it will also be running hotter than the Sun. Comparatively, the fastest humans have ever travel in space is 24,791 mph, achieved by Apollo 10 in 1969

Cutting travel time for astronauts is not just a trivial matter of objective numbers, but is strongly tied to health dangers caused by prolonged exposure to radiation and microgravity. For example, in order to keep crew on future NASA missions to Mars healthy when they return, it's believed that anything less than four-year mission would be ideal.


Nuclear fusion brings a lot of promise, but up until now the challenge has been sustaining the fusion reactions. According to James Lambert, CFO for Pulsar Fusion, "The difficulty is leaning how to hold and confine the super-hot plasma within an electromagnetic field." He adds that, "Scientists have not been able to control the turbulent plasma as it is heated to hundreds of millions of degrees and the reaction simply stops."

The company believes that between improved AI supercomputer simulations, better prediction and confinement model for the plasma, plus valuable data from other partners and their fusion tests, it could improve the design of the rocket engine prototype. 

The Pulsar rocket is slated for preliminary test firing in 2025, and then achieving fusion temperatures by 2027, assuming all goes as planned.