Overnight to Mars

Boney M sang about a Night Flight to Venus.

But how about 45 days to Mars?

Lasers Could Send Missions to Mars in Only 45 Days

https://www.universetoday.com/154487...-only-45-days/

Quote:

. . . a team of researchers from Montreal's McGill University assessed the potential of a laser-thermal propulsion system. According to their study, a spacecraft that relies on a novel propulsion system – where lasers are used to heat hydrogen fuel – could reduce transit times to Mars to just 45 days!

Quote:

The research was led by Emmanuel Duplay, a McGill graduate and current MSc Aerospace Engineering student at TU Delft. He was joined by Associate Professor Andrew Higgins and multiple researchers with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University. Their study, titled "Design of a rapid transit to Mars mission using laser-thermal propulsion", was recently submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astronomy. In recent years, directed-energy (DE) propulsion has been the subject of considerable research and interest. Examples include the Starlight program – also known as the Directed Energy Propulsion for Interstellar Exploration (DEEP-IN) and Directed Energy Interstellar Studies (DEIS) programs – developed by Prof. Phillip Lubin and the UCSB Experimental Cosmology Group (ECG).

All that's left is engineering folks. Is this actually more feasible than having astronauts spend months in low gravity?

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/z2xYWNf