Fuel requirements:

Conventional rockets accelerate by ejecting high speed propellant. As the propellant blasts out of the rocket in one direction, it pushes the spacecraft in the other - Newton's third law. We need a highly efficient energy source that can provide propulsion for a minimum mass of fuel.

One possibility: the mutual annihilation of matter and anti-matter (matter into energy according to E=mc2).

Example: suppose we want to reach a speed of 99% the speed of light:

Ideally we need a propulsion system that needs no propellant.


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