{"id":22752,"date":"2016-02-25T12:23:49","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T20:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=22752"},"modified":"2017-04-29T15:47:43","modified_gmt":"2017-04-29T22:47:43","slug":"photonic-propulsion-cuts-mars-travel-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/photonic-propulsion-cuts-mars-travel-time","title":{"rendered":"Photonic propulsion cuts Mars travel time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent advances in lasers suggest that we may see rockets propelled by light earlier than we had imagined. NASA scientist Philip Lubin and his team are working on a system that would use Earth-based lasers to allow space travel to far-away places in just a fraction of the time needed with current technology.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Using earth based lasers to push along a spacecraft instead of on board hydrocarbon-based fuel could dramatically reduce travel time to Mars, within our lifetime. Currently, it takes five months for a space craft to reach Mars. But, with photonic propulsion, it is likely that small crafts filled with experiments will reach Mars in just 3 days. Large spaceships with astronauts and life support systems will take only one month, which is about 20% of the duration of a current trip.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next? Lubin believes that we may be able to send small crafts with scientific experiments to exoplanets as fast as 5% light speed in, perhaps, 30 years. Eventually, he claims that the technology will carry humans at speeds up to 20% light speed.<\/p>\n

Read about it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent advances in lasers suggest that we may see rockets propelled by light earlier than we had imagined. NASA scientist Philip Lubin and his team are working on a system that would use Earth-based lasers to allow space travel to far-away places in just a fraction of the time needed with current technology. Using earth [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":353,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1545,1497,7,219,1514,1491],"tags":[2127,2388,2389],"class_list":["post-22752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-energy","category-lifeboat","category-physics","category-space-travel","category-transportation","tag-lifeboat","tag-photonic-propulsion","tag-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22752"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57073,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22752\/revisions\/57073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}