Jeff Thornburg

that rapid movement.

And it's supernova because we're using concentrated solar energy and we've innovated around a heat exchanger so we don't have to combust any liquid propellants with our system.

This is so I can carry twice as much fuel, and I have a thermal engine cycle where I'm not using combustion.

So I can have fewer parts, more efficiency, higher thrust, and twice as much fuel, because I'm not carrying an oxidizer, so I don't have to burn anything.

And I really wanted to do nuclear thermal, but I can't buy a nuclear reactor at Lowe's

Gigawatts.

Gigawatts.

At Home Depot?

I joke about this all the time because the thermal engine is a lot like Mr. Fusion from the second Back to the Future movie because we use ammonia as our propellant now, but we could use any.

Okay, yeah, at the end.

At the end.

Gets you to the second, you're right.

I like this.

I like this battle of the trivia.

So the thermal engine's a lot like Mr. Fusion because we can use ammonia, which is our baseline fuel, because it's very storable on orbit, and we have a multi-year life of our spacecraft.

But if I want to start moving out to Mars and I want to use methane, in the future I want to use hydrogen, I want to use other things, I can use other fuels in a thermal engine system.

As versatility, because I'm very much a live off the land kind of guy when it comes to space.

If we're taking everything with us, we've failed as engineers.

That's so cool.

Right, because if I'm going to Mars, I won't think of all the things I need to live, but I want a print machine that can print any tool I need once I'm there.