nick hull wrote:

In article nk.net,
"Terrence Daniels" wrote:

URL:

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/...terlatest.html

"The combination of a nuclear reactor plus a plasma engine could provide a
delta V capability of 30 to 100 thousand MPH. This is plenty for exploring
the solar system."

Is he on-target with this idea? Granted he's talking about The Future, but I
thought ion engines were a low-power, slow & steady sort of propulsion
system. What about delivering high instantaneous thrust, like when a ship
"burns" for getting into & out of orbit?



Ion engines are low thrust and do not use transfer elipses to change
orbits. They use powered trajectories and spital orbits. Works very
well on long term thrust.

--
free men own guns - slaves don't

He didn't say an ion engine.

He said a plasma engine.

While current plasma engines are low thrust, although higher thrust
than ion engines, there is no theoretical reason a high thrust plasma
engine could not be build, given a sufficient technological advancement.

I see nothing wrong with what Ed Lu said, although the engineering
could certainly take a while.

Mike Walsh