/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12269973
>Honestly, MPDs are severely underutilized right now, everybody is hung up on their slow acceleration, as if boosting hard for a couple minutes and then spending months coasting were any faster, when in fact MPD drives accelerating for weeks at a time would rapidly outpace bipropellant or even nuclear drives in terms of actual travel time to Mars and beyond. It's not like we're getting continuous 1G acceleration from anything bellow a torch drive anyways.
It's the power supply. With the right superconductors, pic/link related can get close to 10N/kW, at which point you stop needing nuclear reactors for small vehicles except out past Mars.

https://physics.anu.edu.au/cpf/sp3/hdlt/