Star Trek fans, listen up. Remember how the fictional dilithium crystals were used to make travel faster than the speed of light in Star Trek: The Next Generation? Well those crystals – or crystals with an uncanny similarity to them – may be coming to the real world in one of the best instances of art imitating life that we’ve ever seen.

The University of Huntsville, NASA, Boeing and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory  have developed a space flight engine that runs on crystalline fuel, which could cut flight time to Mars to only three months.

Flying time to Mars currently sits at six to eight months.

Reports suggest the engine will be a fusion reactor that does not leak radiation, and produces less radioactive waste than current reactors. Ross Cortez, rocket scientist and engine team member said:

The fusion fuel we’re focusing on is deuterium [a stable isotope of hydrogen] and Li6 [a stable isotope of the metal lithium] in a crystal structure.

If this project is successful the engine would be the most powerful method of propulsion ever made by humans. This fusion reactor would have to be built in space, as moving it through the atmosphere could prove to be challenging.

[Source: Heavy, HowStuffWorks]