Voyager 1 and New Horizons. You are ignoring heat output. Curiosity's reactor produces 2kW of heat and 125W of electricity. The heat is more important - it i

Voyager 1 and New Horizons. You are ignoring heat output. Curiosity's reactor produces 2kW of heat and 125W of electricity. The heat is more important - it is what keeps the rover from dying at night. Heat output is really useful for propulsion - more useful than electric if you need large amounts of thrust. Something like NERVA would help get astronauts to Mars before the radiation dose gets too high. Or if you wanted to give an asteroid the biggest push possible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA