Okay lets launch this properly then...
Any champagne?

The following quotes are from a paper discussing Electric Propulsion by the three pioneers of Rocket Science... back in the 1920's. I post it here as a reference and a Historical starting point for discussion here.

alfven.princeton.edu..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow">SOURCE
A Critical History of Electric Propulsion: The First 50 Years (1906–1956)
by E. Y. Choueiri
Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory,
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544

It is difficult to think who in aerospace history, perhaps even in the
history of modern science and technology, embodies the quintessential
qualities of the archetypical visionary more than Konstantin Eduardovitch
Tsiolkovsky [6] (1857–1935). It is also difficult to find a more vivid encapsulation of the essence of visionary work than his own words:
"This work of mine is far from considering all of the aspects of the
problem and does not solve any of the practical problems associated
with its realization; however, in the distant future, looking
through the fog, I can see prospects which are so intriguing and
important it is doubtful that anyone dreams of them today."

He acknowledged that EP was at present a dream, and his attention
was to be dedicated to more prosaic problems. This is illustrated
vividly in the following quote from 1924 (by which time the nature
of positively charged atoms had been known, the proton had been
discovered, and he had recognized the better suitability of ions to
propulsion) (Ref. 8, p. 222):
"It is quite probable that electrons and ions can be used, i.e. cathode
and especially anode rays. The force of electricity is unlimited and
can, therefore, produce a powerful flux of ionized helium to serve
a spaceship. However, we shall leave these dreams for a while and
return to our prosaic explosives."

Just as no overview of astronautics and modern rocketry could
be complete without a discussion of the work of Hermann Julius
Oberth (1894–1989), any descriptions of the dawn of EP would
be glaringly wanting without an account of his role in bringing the
concept of EP into the limelight. To exaggerate only a little the
procreational similes often used to describe the “fathers” of rocketry
[32], we could say that if Oberth is now recognized as a father
for rocketry and astronautics he should be lauded as a midwife
for electric propulsion. We say so because Oberth’s major contribution,
as far as EP is concerned, was not in having developed
specific inventions, or having undertaken technically rich conceptualizations,
but rather in having defined, for the first time publicly
and unambiguously, EP as a serious and worthy pursuit in astronautics.
If the field of electric propulsion is not indebted to Oberth
for a lasting technical contribution, it can trace its conceptual origin
as a discipline to the last chapter of his all-time astronautics
classic Wege zur Raumschiffahrt25 (Ways to Spaceflight) published
in 1929. Oberth devoted that whole chapter, titled “Das elektrische
Raumschiff” (“The Electric Spaceship”), to spacecraft power and
EP. In that chapter he extolled the mass-savings capabilities of EP,
predicts its future role in propulsion and attitude control outside the
atmosphere, and advocated electrostatic acceleration of electrically
charged gases, which can be created from refuse on the orbiting
space station that is a major theme of the book.