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Art by Stephan Martiniere
A 22nd-century dream: An unmanned probe powered by nuclear fusion explores a new solar system, after traveling several decades from Earth at 100 million miles an hour.
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Art by Stephan Martiniere
Thousands of colonists might live on this interstellar Mayflower for a journey lasting generations. The ship has its own ecosystem and artificial gravity from its rotating cylindrical hull. A sister ship looms in the giant window.
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Photograph by Michael A. Schwarz
One way to power a starship, says NASA’s Les Johnson, might be with a sail filled by the faint pressure of sunlight or laser light. The sail would be hair thin and shiny to reflect the light. It would also be the size of a small country.
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Photograph by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
This 3,400-square-foot Mylar solar sail was tested in 2005 in a vacuum chamber at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio. NASA plans to launch Sunjammer, a probe with a sail four times as big, on a yearlong cruise toward the sun in 2014.
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Photograph by Mark Thiessen, NGM Staff
To Saturn and beyond, pushed by nuclear bombs exploding behind it, was the plan for Project Orion—but it went no further than this seven-foot model, called Hot Rod, which now sits in a Smithsonian storage facility in Maryland.
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