How NASA's nuclear rockets will take us beyond Mars
April 03, 2013 00:15
The first people to step on to the surface of Mars won't arrive aboard the chemical-fueled rockets that delivered Apollo 11 to the Moon -- they simply don't provide enough thrust to get to the Red Planet before exposing their crews to months of dangerous space radiation.
Instead, NASA is turning to long-ignored nuclear-thermal rocket technology to deliver the first Martian explorers into history.