[charriu]

There might also be the small problem of actually building the fusion engine first. I don't think that's something we're really able to do right now, is it?

[x5n1]

I am glad you asked:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propu...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Longshot

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-Mag_Orion

[bryondowd]

Three of those are fission, not fusion. And Daedalus looks more like a very high level concept, without the actual tech to accomplish it.

[x5n1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propu...

You could potentially replace fission with fusion and speed things up. And yes they were high level designs because of the supposedly immense expense.

[bryondowd]

Right. I'm sure fusion will one day allow us to do incredible things. We just haven't figured it out, yet. Right now, our best attempts at fusion (to my knowledge) put in orders of magnitude more energy than they get out. And the first applications of positive fusion energy would likely be to generate cheap power on Earth, long before it reaches a point where we could drive a ship with it.

[0xffff2]

Daedalus is not even a high level concept at the level we are talking about, it's a completely different level altogether. Project Daedalus was more like a project to establish reasonable parameters on which to base a high level concept.