Dilithium Crystals.

[Ziff]

So, apparently, some University Engineers working with NASA are investigating how to build fusion impulse rocket engines. It get's better. The fuel they are working on is a combination of a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, and a lithium isotope called Li6, in a crystalline structure. Yeah, that's right, Dilithium Crystals. Apparently this engine will halve the time it takes to reach Mars, knocking it down to about 3 months.

Links:

http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek-researchers-to-begin-fusion

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/dilithium-crystals-warp-drive/

[Tommygun]

That interesting, it sounds like a more refined version of that nuclear Orion spacecraft.

[phoenix_ca]

Curious. And hey, I'm still hoping to see the Albucierre drive proven as a real possibility in my lifetime. Maybe not to the point that we're out among the stars, but experimental evidence would be awesome. (No, it might not be likely, but hope is one of those handy human things to have sometimes. Sometimes.)

Though deuterium is expensive. Like, absurdly expensive. (CANDU reactors use them and for all their awesomeness, those things cost a bundle to construct. Less to run than LWR's, but yeesh.)

[bsalis]

Isn't the proper name Lithium Deuteride, not Dilithium Crystal.

edit: also it's just LiD, not Li2D.

Edited October 8, 2012 by bsalis

[Ziff]

Isn't the proper name Lithium Deuteride, not Dilithium Crystal.

edit: also it's just LiD, not Li2D.

I think they took a little liberty with the name, considering it's sci-fi significance.

[Kryten]

Isn't lithium deuteride the stuff they've been using for fusion bombs for the past 50 years?

EDIT: Yep, would have been in the news around when a certain mr. Roddenberry was thinking of ideas for a TV show. Funny that...

On topic, on closer inspection this does seem to basically be a continuously detonating fusion bomb. Powerful certainly, but I'm not sure how safe it could ever be.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Kryten

[Aescwulf]

The thing about space tech is that NASA is now looking at Star Trek for new technology to make because out of all the scifi program's and films things from Star Trek has became reality like the communicator which in reality became the mobile phone and the hypospray is the jet injector which is used for mass vaccinations and also touch technology in Star Trek and the Personal Access Display Device is the tablets and iPads. And by the creation of the Dilithium Crystals is no suprise maybe in the future we will see more technology from Star Trek being used in the real world.

[Ziff]

The thing about space tech is that NASA is now looking at Star Trek for new technology to make because out of all the scifi program's and films things from Star Trek has became reality like the communicator which in reality became the mobile phone and the hypospray is the jet injector which is used for mass vaccinations and also touch technology in Star Trek and the Personal Access Display Device is the tablets and iPads. And by the creation of the Dilithium Crystals is no suprise maybe in the future we will see more technology from Star Trek being used in the real world.

This is how science has always worked. From Kepler dreaming about walking on the moon, to Jules Verne writing about an all electric powered submarine decades before it was possible. Steve Jobs didn't invent the idea of the iPad either, that was thought up in the 1930's and you can even see a working concept of a flat digital interface device in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Karel Capek, in the 1920's, wrote about sentient androids he called Robots. Arthur C. Clarke also predicted that we would have geosynchronous satellites back in the 1950's. Ever read 'A Brave New World'? Aldous Huxley predicted we would map the human genome and be able to manipulate it and artificially conceive babies. Mark Twain even wrote about something that sounds an awful lot like the internet, way back in 1898. This line is straight from his book 'From the London Times of 1904'. "The improved 'limitless-distance' telephone was presently introduced, and the daily doings of the globe made visible to everybody, and audibly discussable too, by witnesses separated by any number of leagues." Crazy, right?

Sci-fi has a disturbing tendency to become sci-fact.

Edit: Have you ever looked at the number of things Jules Verne got correct when he wrote 'From the Earth to the Moon'? 100 years before Apollo 11 he guessed that 3 men would launch from Florida, yes, he picked Florida (for the same obvious reasons that NASA did), and they would return by parachuting into the sea.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Ziff

[Mekan1k]

No space travel is safe. Why start analizing now?

[The Destroyer]

Reminds me of http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/

[bradley101]

NASA is just a political toy for the political partys of America to use to get into power. America needs a miracle to revive its economy and another Russia for competition to drive them to get determined to do something big in space. Sorry but I thing they are on the edge of a breakthrough and there work will be forgotten for 40 so years and then it would be used.

[Borklund]

NASA is just a political toy for the political partys of America to use to get into power. America needs a miracle to revive its economy and another Russia for competition to drive them to get determined to do something big in space. Sorry but I thing they are on the edge of a breakthrough and there work will be forgotten for 40 so years and then it would be used.

It's not though. NASA has barely been mentioned in presidential campaigning in the past, and it isn't a focus of any significant public debate. There's the war driver (which is what got man on the moon, it was not for the sake of pure science), but there's also the economic driver (see Planetary Resources). There's a future in space without the war driver and it all hinges upon lowering the cost of getting things into space, which is what a lot of companies are trying to achieve in different ways, for both cargo and humans. However, war is still a driver. Neil deGrasse Tyson often jokes that if China say they want to establish a military base on Mars the US would be there in 10 months. 1 month to design and build the spacecraft and 9 months to get there.