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I couldn't have said it better.

Why are we even bothering with Ion Engines?  Nuclear Pulse Detonation, Anti-matter, and just about anything that's not a solar sail will go faster than the ion engine.  Even the old liquid oxygen/hydrogen will go faster.

The ion engine has a very high exhaust velocity because the particles being expelled from the engines are going pretty fast.  However, the particles aren't very big, making the energy coming out very little.  It would be good for long distance travel, not short distance trips like mars.

Now let me explain anti-matter engines.  The thrust is fast, because the particles are being expelled at the speed of light (being light after all, it has to go at the speed of light).  The acceleration would be relatively fast because of the insane amount of energy coming out of the rear due to e=mc^2.

If we are going to rely on NASA, the government should just burn the taxpayers' money.  At least they won't be risking any lives.

If nothing that NASA has done has proved their incompetence to you, I guess nothing will.  Having them done the pathetic Ranger probe missions, Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia, totaling 17 dead astronauts, and many more nearly killed, and the manifestly absurd ISS, what else COULD?

On another note, these so-called “practical” ships, which I will assume are (or are similar to) Zubrin’s Mars Direct ships, are jokes.  They would do nothing to develop orbital infrastructure, and, for what they ARE to do, they would do horribly.  Zubrin speaks of humankind spreading to Mars, then, of course, as far out as it can go.  Curious.  We are going to colonize the universe with little Apollo-sized rockets, whose missions do nothing for financial profit, and nothing for orbital infrastructure?  Are we going to fight Earth’s gravity well all the way to Alpha Centauri?  I don’t think so.  It’s just so amusing.  Zubrin blabs about advanced propulsion systems (nuke-pulse, fusion, especially solar sails, or what have you), yet opposes orbital infrastructure, at least in the short term, i.e., he just wants no go to Mars NOW.

What I’m trying to get across here is that Zubin zealots don’t see the whole picture.  They only see narrowly down the path that will, yes, get them to Mars NOW.  They don’t seem to realize if significant orbital infrastructure can be attained, then the expansion into space can proceed at exponential rates that, without it, would be impossible.

So, I will now move on to what is directly relevant in this topic.  Once such orbital infrastructure is attained, then large ships could be built, out of lunar or other space resources. They could, themselves, set up orbital infrastructure somewhere else, such as Mars.  Then, huge masses could be transported between Earth and other destinations.  Mars Direct-style missions have no hope doing this.  They could only move a few people and things to Mars, as Apollo did to the moon.  But hey, at least they get us to Mars NOW.

Also, little Zubrin ships have insignificant radiation shielding.  Zubrin himself admits that one would have a 2% chance of getting fatal cancer on a to-Mars voyage, on his ships.  So as we colonize Mars, we can expect 1 of 50 people to get picked off.  But Zubrin could care less.  He’ll marginalize anything (or apparently anyone) so long as we get to Mars NOW.  Large interplanetary vessels would have no problem carrying radiation shielding, such as lead, attained from space resources (hence, the lead never goes up a gravity well).  Zubrin’s ships simply couldn’t lift that on top of everything else.