No where does life seem to imitate art in the sci-fi world more than in the world of Star Trek ( flip phones, flat screen monitors, touch screens, etc etc). Granted we dont have transporters, warp drive, or artificial gravity yet but its fun to see things actually come into existence that were once pure flights of fancy.

Well for any wanna-be starship captains out there, tell your chief engineer to get his isolinear spanner ready. Your ship may be ready sooner than you thought.  The point of this post is this short new article about real research being done to develop something analogous to impulse engines.

Obviously very preliminary stuff but still cool.

Yeah, well, there is that fusion power thing, which has been 20 years out for the last 50 years. How is that reactor in France coming along?

I do not expect that nuclear fusion will never be usable for producing electricity commercially. Reaching a point where there is more energy produced than was put in might be possible, but to use the surplus of energy is a different story.

Nuclear fusion impulse rocket engines might be another story. The fusion must be controlled, and the energy should be left out in one direction. That sounds less difficult. Who knows?