Nuclear Rockets to Jupoter's moons
My IE 5.5 will not allow me to create a new topic on THIS page
In any case, NASA "plans" to fly a nuke to J's moons in 2011 if all goes well (sic). Problem is, they plan to use a wimpo ion engine yielding an 11 year flight time. Now I ask myself, "Self, why given the 2011 date wouldn't they try, just try a solar powered LEO test flight of a VASIMR engine, say by 2007?" VASIMR, if it's flight worthy, would yield a far lower trip time via its higher thrust and ISP.