Some see Electrodynamic Tethers as the future of space travel and many are right. They are cost effective and have relatively basic fundemental equasions including Faraday's Law of Induction and the Lorentz Force Equation. But this technology has the potential to not only be used to for propolsion, but also as powerful generators. When a tether comes in contact with a planet which has a magnetic field, it generates a current and converts some kinetic energy into electrical energy.

Engineering is all about figures, and my feeling about this attempt isn't too good. Would you provide computed examples about what such a tether can achieve? I'd be glad to change my mind then.

 

I know one flew aboard a space shuttle but I didn't read any result.

 

"Space travel" could be over-ambitious for tethers... When I read a short article about them, the purpose was to compensate the atmospheric drag on low-Earth orbit, which isn't the same as reaching Encelade. They could also convert trajectory energy to electricity, which is less useful to my eyes.

The Shuttle experiment ended when the tether snapped. It was one of those embarrassing failures no one at NASA likes to remember.