FASTER? PLEASE! Breakthrough rocket engine could accelerate to 99% the speed of light.

Burns’ concept, called the “helical engine,” is not a single closed loop. Instead, it’s a helical structure that resembles a stretched-out spring. Burns described the engine as accelerating ions confined in a loop to moderate relativistic speeds, and then varying their velocity to make slight changes to their mass.

The engine moves ions back and forth along the direction of travel to generate thrust. Notably, the engine has no moving parts, except for ions that travel in a vacuum line and are trapped inside electric and magnetic fields.

This concept sounds impressive in theory, but it has some significant practical challenges to overcome. According to New Scientist, the helical chamber would have to be quite large, precisely around 200 meters (656 feet) long and 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter.

Generating 1 newton of thrust would require producing 165 megawatts of energy, which is equivalent to the power output of a power station required to accelerate a mass of 1 kilogram per second squared. Therefore, despite the enormous input, the output is incredibly small, making it a terribly inefficient process.

But in the vacuum of space? It just might work. “The engine itself would be able to get to 99 per cent the speed of light if you had enough time and power,” Burns told New Scientist.

How much time and how much power aren’t exactly trivial questions.