Posted by tourdemars to Technology at January 17, 2004 12:00 PM

As scientists mull President George W. Bush's bold new space proposal, nuclear power stands out as one of NASA's best understood and most controversial options for powering the next generation of spacecraft. Included in Bush's space initiative, still vague in the details, is a call for "new power generation (and) propulsion" systems for a ship the President has called the Crew Exploration Vehicle.