One of the most intriguing of these is Impulse Space, a company founded two years ago by rocket scientist Tom Mueller, who was a founding employee at SpaceX before leaving in 2020.

But just as the V-2 rocket was far from the apex of chemical propulsion, the first NTR-enabled spacecraft will be far from the last word in the next chapter of human spaceflight.

Tom Mueller is a self-described race car guy. Upon retiring from his role as CTO of Propulsion at SpaceX in November 2020, he "mostly wanted to go racing and ride dirt bikes and travel,” he said ...

Impulse Space has raised a massive new tranche of funding as big-name investors bet that moving satellites around in orbit will soon be a high demand service. The startup, which was founded by Tom ...

This high thrust allows the rocket to accelerate faster. These systems also have a high specific impulse. Specific impulse measures how efficiently the propellant is used to generate thrust. Nuclear ...

Ad Astra Rocket Company has spent over two decades developing the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR), a highly efficient electric propulsion system. VASIMR operates by using ...

Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) has stood as a promising potential alternative propulsion technology for decades. Chemical rockets have begun to reach their theoretical maximum efficiency, and ...

One of these designs, known as a Centrifugal Nuclear Thermal Rocket ... (and thus propulsion), providing a specific impulse of roughly 900 seconds. Without getting too much into it ...