In Poul Anderson's 1970 novel Tau Zero, a starship crew seeks to travel to the star Beta Virginis in hopes of colonizing a new planet.The ship's mode of propulsion is a "Bussard ramjet," an actual ...

The Bussard Ramjet is an elegant solution for sending crewed missions to other star systems, at least in theory. Earlier concepts like nuclear pulse propulsion (NPP) and fusion propulsion had been ...

Physicists have analyzed a hypothetical propulsion system, which has sparked the interest of both scientists and science fiction authors: the ramjet propulsion system. New calculations show: it ...

Proton-proton fusion produces 99 percent of the Sun’s energy, in a process that begins with two hydrogen nuclei and ends with one helium nucleus, releasing energy along the way. We’d love to exploit ...

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. A ramjet is ...

So after half a century of hope for interstellar travel in the distant future, it is now apparent that the ramjet drive, while an interesting idea, will remain merely part of science fiction.

The result is unfortunately disappointing for fans of interstellar travel: it cannot work the way Robert Bussard, the inventor of this propulsion system, thought it up in 1960.