>
Why Walmart Is Opening 'Dark Stores' That Customers Can't Go Inside
As Gaza Starves, US Green Lights More US Weapons To Israel
Marshall Rosenberg talks about money: how to change our relation to money...
xAI Grok 3.5 Renamed Grok 4 and Has Specialized Coding Model
AI goes full HAL: Blackmail, espionage, and murder to avoid shutdown
BREAKING UPDATE Neuralink and Optimus
1900 Scientists Say 'Climate Change Not Caused By CO2' – The Real Environment Movement...
New molecule could create stamp-sized drives with 100x more storage
DARPA fast tracks flight tests for new military drones
ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study
How China Won the Thorium Nuclear Energy Race
Sunlight-Powered Catalyst Supercharges Green Hydrogen Production by 800%
Over the past 64 years, there's been remarkable success with robotic satellites and probes, but these have been relatively small, with the heaviest being the ATV cargo ship weighing in at 44,738 lb (20,293 kg) fully loaded – and that one only went into low-Earth orbit. The largest deep space probe was the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, which came in at a titchy 12,467 lb (5,655 kg).
This is because the greatest obstacle to humanity becoming a true spacefaring species is the engines used to propel spacecraft across the solar system and beyond. Chemical rockets can push out an impressive amount of thrust, but have very little specific impulse. That is, they can't fire for very long before they run out of propellant. Electric propulsion systems, like Hall thrusters, are the opposite. They only put out about as much thrust as the weight of a small coin, but they can burn for months as opposed to minutes, so they can (slowly) build up to great speeds.