dietz@SLB-DOLL.CSNET (Paul Dietz) (01/09/86)
Lew Allen, the head of JPL, said in an interview in OMNI magazine that some folks at JPL have a plan for a "innerstellar" probe: a vehicle that will travel 1000 AU out from the sun in 50 years (at about 100 km/sec). The purpose of the probe is to observe the solar system from the outside to obtain reference data for observations of other stellar systems, and to greatly extend the baseline for parallax measurements. I was wondering if anyone knew what propulsion system they were considering. Two that come to mind are nuclear powered ion engines or solar sails.