... which is why i'm always cautioning against the press release optimism of both astrobiological & technology development pork barrelling. The White House is trying to punish the space science community for having the temerity to disagree with its priorities; & so needs to get a good, solid Moe Howard in the eyes; & to do that, we have to keep the political heat up & give Mikulski's Maryland mafia the chance to keep New Horizons on the slab... & we >have< to keep NH on the slab; because if it doesn't fly, the chances of NASA launching anything in Pluto/Charon's direction before about 2020 is pretty close to zero.

The hypothetical (it's reasonably likely; but not necessarily known) atmospheric freeze out acts against us if we lose NH: given the length of the throw, you can't use existing of near term systems to get there by the mid 2020s unless you pretty much start building now; so the loss of the Jupiter window will just be an excuse not to fly the thing at all. Futuristic propulsions won't help us; just each up valuable research dollars....

To claim - as some here do - that spending new fortunes playing with nuclear technologies will actually assist a Pluto/Charon mission ignores the lessons of 40 years of NASA history; & means that the imbalance between pork barraelling technology development & real space science will remain high.

Robert