What if I told you that we possess just the right technologies to take us to Alpha Centauri in less than 50 years?
In an epoch where even going to Mars seems very hard, this statement might sound crazy, but trust me: it won’t anymore after you have watched this video.
In 1958, the Orion Project started. It was guided by nuclear physicists Ted Taylor and Freeman Dyson. Their purpose? Building a nuclear-propelled rocket capable of sending a whole spaceship to Mars in a very short time, and to places like Alpha Centauri in less than a human lifetime.
Unfortunately for space explorers though, the Orion concept is inherently “dirty”, because it uses fission fuel, and it is also very inefficient. A better mission concept would exploit fusion. However, while fission has been mastered and the technology required to build an Orion-type spaceship has existed for over 40 years now, no one has ever yet produced a properly controlled fusion energy.