More on The Hot Equations

Another objection to Ken Burnside's The Hot Equations is that he spends a lot of time on the performance of electric propulsion (at current performance levels) and nuclear thermal rockets (tested experimentally, but not yet ready for operational missions.) While this technology will support a great deal of interesting exploration, I don't think it will support interplanetary commerce worth fighting a space war over. That will probably require something with higher performance, like a VASIMIR engine or a fusion pulse drive.