Earth to Mars In Two Weeks?

Waves writes "Scientists at Ben-Gurion University have shown that an unusual nuclear fuel could send space vehicles from Earth to Mars in as little as two weeks. Spacecraft now take between eight and 10 months to make the same trip. Instead of using Plutonium-239 or Uranium-235 The research shows a fairly rare nuclear material, americium-242m (Am-242m), when used as an extremely thin metallic film, is capable of sustaining nuclear fission at 1% of the mass of Plutonium." Interesting. But unless I'm totally mistaken, the thermal generators on spacecraft are used only for electricity, not propulsion, at the current time.

Comments

Space is too big to pollute. *think* about it.

[Christopher Thomas]

Several generations from now, will our children look back and wonder how we could have recklessly polluted space like that?

Um, if we took the entire mass of our *planet* and spread it around the inner solar system as a dust cloud, it wouldn't have any environmental effect on other planets in the vicinity.

How's the exhaust from a probe supposed to do anything?

I'm overlooking the fact that cosmic rays already send more hard radiation through the inner solar system than we could ever hope to put there.

The only legitimate concern is dumping radioactive waste just above the Earth's atmosphere. The simple solution: shield the ship until you're far away from Earth!

Pollution in deep space is a non-issue.