Imagine a jet engine that could propel an aircraft faster than a traditional engine, taking us all the way to the edge of the atmosphere, all without burning fossil fuels - and for a low cost.

That's exactly what plasma jet engines should be able to do, although thus far they have been confined to research labs, mostly those focusing on using the engines to move satellites and other spacecraft.

Now researchers from the Technical University of Berlin are working to bring them out of the lab and into the sky. 

Instead of burning fuel and compressed air and then shoving the results out of the back of an engine to cause a forward propulsion, a plasma jet engine mimics a fusion reactor or a star.

It creates electricity by exciting and compressing gas into a plasma, and then generating an electromagnetic field.

Led by Berkant Göksel, the research team aims to marry the plasma engine and the passenger jet to come up with something that could fly at very high altitudes but still take off and land.