The Orion Project, brainchild of Freeman Dyson and other scientists from more than five decades ago, which aimed to make far-flung space travel possible in the short term via nuclear-fueled rockets, was collateral damage of non proliferation treaties. (See here and here.) But NASA is now trying to make travel times brief with a new fusion engine. From Iain Thomson in the UK Register:

“NASA, and plenty of private individuals, want to put mankind on Mars. Now a team at the University of Washington, funded by the space agency, is about to start building a fusion engine that could get humans there in just 30 days and make other forms of space travel obsolete.

‘Using existing rocket fuels, it’s nearly impossible for humans to explore much beyond Earth,’ said lead researcher John Slough, a UW research associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics in a statement. ‘We are hoping to give us a much more powerful source of energy in space that could eventually lead to making interplanetary travel commonplace.’

The proposed Fusion Driven Rocket (FDR) is a 150-ton system that uses magnetism to compress lithium or aluminum metal bands around a deuterium-tritium fuel pellet to initiate fusion. The resultant microsecond reaction forces the propellant mass out at 30 kilometers per second, and would be able to pulse every minute or so and not cause g-force damage to the spacecraft’s occupants.”