VASIMR:Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket

[damocles]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start...rn.pdf&e=10342

I've been following this rocket with interest for ten years.

Originally the objections were that the motor required magnets that were too heavy or that the 100 megawatt power supply would never be orbitted or that the radio heating architecture for the plasma would never be solved.

I have two questions.

Is this rocket motor tangled up in bureaucratic bungling as badly as fusion research has been among the Europeans and Americans for the last fifteen years?

Is there any technical merit in VASIMR as it exists now?

I know I have little faith in the NASA PROMETHEUS program at the moment and it appears to me that VASIMR dropped off the visible horizon as far as that agency is concerned..