ASTRONOMY AND SPACEEXPLORATION

Viewpoint: Yes, nuclear technology offers the only feasible method for many future space missions.

Viewpoint: No, nuclear technology in space is a dangerous proposition that should be avoided.

Few topics generate as much impassioned debate as the use of nuclear energy—the extraction of energy from radioactive nuclei by fission (splitting of the atomic nuclei) or fusion (slamming two lighter nuclei together to produce a heavier one and an attendant release of energy). Nuclear energy is efficient and clean and produces markedly greater energy return per unit amount of fuel than do other methods of energy generation.

Nuclear energy was first harnessed as a means of developing and delivering weapons of mass destruction: the A-bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on...