Greetings fellow Asgardians, it has recently been announced by the University of Bristol, UK that they have succeeded in developing a long life 'nuclear' diamond battery (http://www.seeker.com/nuclear-waste-and-diamonds-make-batteries-that-last-5000-years-2120412155.html) although this work is at a very early stage I thought that it would be useful to bring it to everyone's attention as technologies like this coupled with other developments such as the promising EmDrive (currently being tested by NASA) may be very useful in powering the spacecraft of the future. Essentially the next stage is to extract Carbon 14 from spend nuclear waste from the graphite used in fission reactors, crystallise this as diamond and then encase this nuclear core in a conventional diamond to provide the required radiation shielding - the result of the process is a nuclear battery that continues to provide power for over 5,000 years. I think that this an imaginative and innovative use of a nuclear 'waste' product.

The EM-Drive, AKA Q-Thruster has been tested. There was a 2015 findings report leaked, and then released. That's not to say testing is completed, just it has been independantly verfied as providing viable thrust.

The diamond batteries are far too early in development for my personal consideration as a viable power source right now, and have been operating under the assumption that solar arrays and where this is impractical, nuclear generators, could provide a realible power source for such devices. But it's definitely something to be looking at.

i saw the diamond nuclear battery technology as well , very interesting indeed, i am curious about some of the more technical aspects as this develops. there was also information on the development of diamonds that i think would go well with this... rather than needing such high pressure to create the diamonds, they used extremely high powered laser to melt some specially formulated carbon... i will look for this news post in my email and post it here when i find it.

i found it, it is Q-Carbon

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/01/tech/super-diamond-q-carbon-scientists-laser/