[KevinDavis]

Cool

[KevinDavis]

[Junior]

Their hope, eventually, is to use electricity generated by nuclear power to propel a space probe and power its instruments on a voyage to the icy moons of Jupiter, satellites that just possibly might harbour life beneath their ice.

Any life on the Jovian satellites will be unicellular. For multicellulars to evolve, there has to be plentiful oxygen, and for there to be plentiful oxygen there has to be plants. I don't think the sunlight at Jupiter's orbit is sufficient to support extensive plant life.

[lepton]

Nuclear power is EVIL.

Please sign out petition to turn off the sun.

[Old Sarge]

I thought Cassini was nuclear? Or were all those long-hair protestors at the launch site misled?

[Arkie2]

NASA is doing some neat things with propulsion technology short of a nuclear powered rocket. The Dawn mission will be powered by the second Ion Engine after DS1 validated the technology. The New Horizons Pluto mission will get a speed boost from an Atlas rocket that should get it's speed up around 90,000 mph initially.

A viable nuclear rocket is at least 10 years away and that's only if it gets a final go ahead from a timid (afraid of the enviros) congress.

[chilepepper]

i always thought the coolest space propulsion idea to come out of the fifties was the plan to detonate an atomic bomb behind a spacecraft to push it...