Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science

Some gossip about Prometheus / JIMO
Gary — (archived)

There's a new website about Prometheus at:

http://prometheus.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm?pageL1=homePage

Prometheus was the project to build the nuclear reactor for JIMO. JIMO got canned because it was expensive and it wasn't clear the nuclear electric propulsion system was reliable enough to get all the way to Jupiter. The hall way gossip is that a different version of JIMO will fly off to our own Moon and carry out its primary mission in lunar orbit as an engineering prototype. If the vehicle works as expected, it would then fly off to different asteroids, investigating them until the vehicle broke down. In essence, if Prometheus can get to the Moon then it can be declared a "success" (politically important for a big ticket project). From that point on, everything is icing on the cake.

Gary

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