The official technical name of the drive?

The Mini-Magnetosphere Plasma Propulsion system, or the M2P2.

Sounds a bit like one of those free sound file downloads that's pissing off the record companies so much these days.

However, the name given to it by excited NASA hacks is a bit more romantic - the Star Rider.

This lovely little drive projects a thirty mile wide electromagnetic field 'sail', which is then pumped full of plasma gas to form the 'canvas' of the sail.

The craft is intended to ride the solar winds generated by the sun. It has a top speed of over 4 million miles a day (way, way faster than what is currently possible using conventional rocket technology).

In fact, that's about as fast as non-relativity distorting technology would be capable of. What a wind to catch as well! There's a nearly 2-million mile an hour gale of solar particles raging in space, totally free to use.

NASA staff are now touting vehicles based on the Star Rider as the workhorse model for driving humanity's long term expansion into the solar system.

Realistically, these ships are going to need to be assembled in orbit and will never touch down in a gravity well.

Astronauts are going to have to rely on the good old oily rocket for their lander vehicles for a while longer, it seems.

For the full technical gen. on this puppy, surf on over to ...

http://www.geophys.washington.edu/Space/SpaceModel/M2P2