I say that's the coolest use of kickstarter ever... It says they reached their funding goal, so where's my electric plasma spaceship?

<img src="' http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_razz.gi f"' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':P' />

But I also think it's a disgrace that concepts like this actually have to go to kickstarter for money... SHAME ON YOU WORLD GOVERNMENTS! SHAME!

It's reminded me of another electric plasma propulsion system, the VASIMR engine which has been in development since... wait for it... the freaking 70s!

Can we stop building tanks and bombs for 5 minutes and give some money towards space exploration? Even diverting a tiny fraction of the US defense budget would propel... (see what I did there?) development of this tech forward immeasurably.

This baby is supposed to have the potential to cut travel time for stuff like Mars missions from 2 years to 5 months!

I haven't heard anything about VASIMR in a while though, there was some live testing a year or two ago and it looked promising... There is a testbed launch launch to ISS scheduled for 2015... which is both good and as I said earlier, somewhat disgraceful that it's taken this long.

It's generally thought to be unsuitable for ground launches... which is good imo as this will encourage development of in-orbit construction concepts and we all know that's how you build starships lol.

Electric plasma propulsion is the next big step imo, it's the gateway to finally opening up the solar system to proper human exploration.

I hope that company that was seriously proposing asteroid mining are looking at this tech...