I really hope this happens bcus humanity really needs a serious space program for many reasons. A serious space program will help end the dwindling resources farce that we are fed here on Earth, it will also help reduce oevrpopulation, When you have colonies on the Moon & Mars then you have room for another 6 billion. It will also be the biggest boost to the US & world economies since the 1990s or the 19th C Gold rush. Of course there will come advances in technology, medicine, agriculture, mining, astronomy & many more things
This would be a magnificent goal. I hope we do it. I know we can. Those out of work engineers building rocket powered go carts would probalby be able to get us there quickly if given this as a focus of their energy. Not to sound dumb but what is a nuclear powered rocket? One article I read said this is how we would get to Mars..?
A nuclear powered rocket has a nuke fission plant on board that heats up some form of propellant & spews it out the rocket tubes. Advantage is that it has great range, disadvantage is that you need a lot of heavy shielding but there is so much radiation in space already from the Sun that perhaps the crew would be ok with just anti solar rad shielding. An Ion rocket is also a great way to go, very high tech but offers possibly the highest top speed, well over 10% of light speed I believe
Of course the Ion rocket has very slow acceleration to keep the crew from becoming mashed potatoes so it takes a few weeks to get up to top speed
