Chinkuli,+Shakuzelah+ions

The stars have always seemed so unabttanially distant, even the very planets in our own solar system. However, for the last few years scientists have been working on an ion powered rocket which may eventually replace conventional chemical rockets. Now, for those of you who don't know what "Ion Power" is, when you supercharge atoms they become known as ions, you charge atoms by runing them at near light speeds through specially designed tubes. The rocket will have the required thrust to reach mars, which would be a year long journey there and back, in a mere 39 days. Chemically powered rockets use most of their fuel up to escape Earth's gravity, however and ion powered rocket would use superheated ion, or plasma, which is channel out of the rocket through a strong magnetic field, propelling the shuttle. The secret to its speed is that it never runs out of fuel therefor does not have to shut down its boosters, also more importantly is that the ions are pushed out at an ever accelerating rate so the shuttle will continuously gain speed on its journey. The hitch to this ideal solar system tromping rocket is that while ion energy eventually becomes very powerful at first its thrust is too weak to escape earth's gravity, but that can be remedied by assitance from a chemical rocket. The reasl problem is the their simpliy isn't the technology to power the rocket, it would take an onboard nuclear reactor to give the rocket suffcient power, and since Nuke technology is still new to us, the ion rocket is still a long ways off.

Soureces: [] []

I think this could be a massive breakthrough if a power source can be develpoped, while it may not be fast enough to travel the stars it could possibily make colonization of other planets more than a mere pipe dream. \