OK i know theres been a lot of messages about ion engines on
here and in all of the replies everyone mentions the "paper
weight thrust", however that is using nasas current ion engine.
If those particles were accelerated faster, and more of them at
once, then a trip to mars or the moon using ion engines would be
a lot more feasible. And according to current theories mass
increases with speed, and with current technology we can
accelerate particles to 0.99999... times the speed of light. Now
if a engine was built using those particles accelerators, while
it would require more power, there would not need to be as much
fuel. Please respond to me if any of this could work You do
realise that the particle accelerator we use to get particles to
this speed are huge rings with diameters of 30 km or more ?
Other linear accelerators, like the one in Stanford are more
like 3 km long but they don't get the same amount of energy into
their particles. These things are a bit less practicle when
deployed in space. They incre