/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10938211
Because this electric engine is only cool if you don't have to supply it with electricity.

Zubrin has been slowly losing his mind for ages and should not be taken seriously

>>10938695
He's become a lot more outspoken against extremist environmentalism recently, but I don't think he's losing his mind or anything. Hes just grumpy.

>>10938211
His critique is more that it's unneeded and doesn't make economic sense. If we already have a space-rated reactor, there are better engines like Timberwind sitting on the shelf. Otherwise just use liquid or electric drives that we already have.

>>10938211
Zubrin planned an architecture for going to mars in the early 90s. If we wait for meme tech before going to mars, we will be waiting another 50 years. Why do it that way, when we can already do it with present technical capabilities.

That honestly seems like a cool engine, but it needs to be nuclear powered. We will have high speed ships when we can bottle up fusion reactions and send the exhaust out one side. If fusion energy is decades away, fusion spaceships are likely centuries away. They won't really make sense until we need them to colonize the outer solar system, but before that we should colonize the moon and mars, using technology that is already available.

>>10938871
Fusion's taking so long that at this point I'm convinced we're going to leapfrog past fusion space propulsion and go straight to Avatar-style directed matter/antimatter reactions.