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http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/n … 30205.html
Sounds good, O'Keefe looks pretty comitted.
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I think that a commitment to humans on Mars will wait until the years beyond 2010, after Jupiter Tour has validated the nuclear electric propulsion that will almost uncertainly be used in such an effort.
Project Prometheus is a politically safe way for the Bush administration to lay the groundwork for a Mars effort without the embarassment of SEI.
The only way to speed up this timetable is to adopt Mars Direct and utilize Russian Topaz reactors to provide power for the surface base.
Who needs Michael Griffin when you can have Peter Griffin? Catch "Family Guy" Sunday nights on FOX.
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I did some calculations (again). An NTR expendable booster with the launch mass of the shuttle system could get around 650,000 kg of payload into orbit...650 tonnes! Compare this to the shuttle's payload of 25,000 kg.
A 600,000 kg HTOL SSTO NTR, about the mass supported by airstrips, can get 150,000 kg into orbit, 150 tonnes (6x the payload of the shuttle), and could be completely reusable (except for the fuel rods, which absorb the waste). Even tanks could be reused. I was thinking of an isolating chamber for the uranium that leaked out uranium as the NTR burned the reactor uranium, and the chamber could be closed in an emergency (automatically or manually...automatically meaning pressure swings, temp swings, etc), so no big nuclear boom. And you have less fuel, again minimizing explosions.
Let's say we build a scaled down, 750,000 kg HLV. We get around 225,000 kg to orbit-225 tonnes, which allows a much larger and more flexible mission (no tin cans!).
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Those are great ideas. I just don't think you could get one off the ground. Firing a nuclear rocket in the atmosphere just scares too many people. I'm sure that in a few decades after they've been shown to be safe in space use they will be considered for ground launch.
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I'll cut and paste what I said over at space.com:
"In my view, if you make it safe enough so that the real experts in the field, be they from NASA to Princeton, are confident enough in their safety that they come out to support it, people will trust the experts over the protesters.
The problem is, we have a reactor, now we have to integrate it into a system. In integrating it, we have to plan for each contingency, which I've tried to do. If we do this, it will be accepted by the experts, who will then convince the public. A bunch of protestors couldn't stand up to the intellectual capacities of NASA engineers, or university doctorates."
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