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Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rocket
From the report, we are not talking about Orion, or direct thrust from nuclear heating, but rather some sort of electric propulsion system using electricity from a reactor for a proposed mission to Mars.
Bimodal Nuclear Thermal RocketSomething like ion drive, or plasma drive would likely cut transit time by at least ¾ for a manned trip to Mars, and if a ground base were established, a nuclear power supply would handle the reduced solar energy levels there.
I'd take this with a grain of salt, because the cost quoted for this is a bit over US $¾ billion, which sounds like a quote from Never Land.
America need to go back to the development of some kind of nuclear propulsion.Chemical rockets can't be improved to much.Some projects that were done here were NERVA,Kiwi,Peewee,Phoebus,NRX,SNRE,Dumbo,STNP,Project Timberwind,Project Prometheus,NEP,Project Longshot.No one passed the prototype stage.
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