At New Scientist, Michael Marshall describes ten hypothetical technologies that could propel spacecraft at greater distances and higher speeds than ever before. These aren’t warp drives and hyperspace wormholes, but real science. One example is the ion thruster, which may be just a few years away from actuality:

Conventional rockets work by shooting gases out of their rear exhausts at high speeds, thus generating thrust. Ion thrusters use the same principle, but instead of blasting out hot gases, they shoot out a beam of electrically charged particles, or ions.

They provide quite a weak thrust, but crucially they use far ...

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