Ad Astra CEO Franklin Chang Diaz, who flew on the space shuttle seven times during his NASA days, said that he expects his company’s plasma engine to mark a “paradigm shift in transportation in space,”. He also called typical, chemical fuel-powered rockets — the kind NASA and SpaceX use — “primitive.”
A plasma rocket doesn’t burn fuel like a combustion engine. Rather, CBC reports that it uses electric fields to heat gases millions of degrees hotter than a traditional engine can.
That extra boost lets astronauts travel two to three times faster. Because that means less exposure to deadly cosmic radiation along the way, the trip suddenly becomes a whole lot more feasible.
