21st Century and Beyond - Future Space Rockets and Breakthrough Propulsion, NASA Research, Near-term Plans, and Far-out Science Fiction Concepts from ... Sails, Ion Electric, Antimatter, and Fusion

This book-on-a-disc is a comprehensive collection of NASA documents and papers on current research into future rocket designs and breakthrough propulsion concepts. NASA's current project to develop a reusable design that could replace the Space Shuttle, the Space Launch Initiative, is covered in detail, along with a wide range of exciting "breakthrough" concepts for futuristic propulsion. Nuclear rockets, hypersonics, space elevators, solar sails, ion electric engines, antimatter engines, tethers, beamed energy and laser propulsion, plasma thrusters, scramjets, interstellar sails, helicon-wave thrusters, and nuclear fusion rockets are included, with proposals for the exploration of Mars, asteroids, the outer planets, and even stars! Let your imagination soar as you read some of these incredible ideas that could take humanity far beyond where chemical rockets can travel.

Our American Spaceflight Encyclopedia CD-ROMs are designed to provide a convenient user-friendly reference work, utilizing the benefits of the Adobe Acrobat PDF format to uniformly present thousands of pages that can be rapidly reviewed or printed. Vast archives of important government information that might otherwise remain inaccessible are available for instant review. This CD-ROM makes an ideal reference work and educational tool, and is indispensable for any space enthusiast!