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It makes me unpopular, but I don't think we should be thinking about Mars until we have the political will to build nukes is space. Chemical rockets are too slow and too mass limited. Just try running a PC in a non-teperature controlled garage for two years. No way it is going to keep working, but this ship has to do just that. Take a lawnmower, hardly a delicate piece of high technology, fuel it up and let it sit for two years and then try to start it. That is exactly what Orion needs to do. After a year in space a person looses 15% of their bone mass even if they exercise for two hours each day. The crew will be up there for more than twice that long. Will they be incapacitated by the 3g or more shock of reentry?

Build something like the NERVA and you can cut the time in half, and have enough spare mass to spin up the ship for gravity. Also being a bigger ship you can carry more spare parts. Heck the old 1950's Project Orion was talking about throwing a ship the size of a destroyer to mars in only 90 days. It played heck with launch facilities, but sit on an A- Bomb and pull the trigger and you are definitely going someplace in one heck of a hurry. And you actually took less rads then with a chemical powered ship because it had enough spare mass for a proper solar storm shelter.

It doesn’t make you unpopular with me. I’m pro nuke. I think every neighborhood should have it’s own nuke power station. Problem is, when that is mentioned, people invariably think of Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, which was notable mostly for Jimmy Carter, the China Syndrome, and a few inept officials, as no one died, and no link to any Cancer caused deaths has ever been established.

Now, we rank 17th in nuke energy produced, even though we consume the most.

Sad.