NASA's Journey To Mars May Use Nuclear Rockets (blastingnews.com)

MarkWhittington writes: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has been making the rounds of congressional committees, defending the indefensible, that being the latest Obama space agency budget proposal. Thursday it was the turn of the House Science Committee to complain to Bolden that the budget underfunded the Journey to Mars and to vow that more money would be forthcoming. One of the other complaints Congress has been making is that NASA lacks a plan to get people to Mars, scheduled to happen sometime in the 2030s. Bolden was coy, suggesting that the time was not right to start firming up architectures and missions. However, he did drop an intriguing hint that a nuclear thermal rocket engine being developed at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center may take people to Mars quicker than chemical rockets.

Comments

We need constant acceleration ships

[tarpitcod]

A 0.01g constant acceleration ship gives you the Solar System.

A ship capable of a constant 0.01g acceleration would be a game-changer. Break the steps down as X-prizes. Build a 0.001g ship. Scale it up to a 0.005g ship. Next step is get it to 0.01g and you can reach Mars in three months and anywhere out to Pluto in just less than a year. First place to go? Prospecting the asteroid belt would be my vote. Find useful stuff, use it to build more useful stuff.

Re:There is a plan. But Congress wouldn't like it.

[Rei]

No, the space station was a relic of the Apollo era.

Here was the thinking of the time, still high on the success of the Apollo program and dreaming of an even grander future (one in which their budgets didn't get deeply slashed).

1) We'll launch Skylab. It's going to get tons of usage.
2) At the same time, we'll develop a reusable launch system - a Space Shuttle. It's going to get tons and tons of usage and so it'll be very cheap per launch even if annual programme costs are high. And we'll save money because all disposable launch vehicle programs are going to go away.
3) Why is it going to get tons of usage? At first, mainly just restocking and reboosting Skylab. But shortly thereafter, it's going to be very busy because we're going to have three other large projects going on at the time:
3a) We're going to launch a giant 50-100 man "space base" to work on learning to live long-term and produce things in space
3b) We're going to establish a permanent moon base
3c) We're going to go be prepping to send humans to Mars, and then other celestial bodies - maybe as early as 1981!
3d) Oh, and we're also going to significantly expand our planetary exploration programme.
4) All of these things are going to require tons of launches. And the Shuttle will keep them cheap so that we can actually afford them.

That was the dream. Sure did fall apart, didn't it?