If we use that type of propulsion my guess the ship will be built in space.
Not bad at all actually. The nuclear material can be sealed in little blocks. They had one that worked in the 60’s. Seen it firsthand. Stuck my head up the nozzle. But it never went into production.
Actually pretty darn safe statistically.
Well I would imagine it would be with current rockets, but what if something goes wrong and the fissile material just goes?
Back in 1983 Dr. Robert Forward was performing a study of advanced propulsion for the USAF.
I offered my idea: Mini-Orion craft using Californium bombs. IIRC, critical mass for a Californium bomb is about 1 ounce.
Tether technology offers some astounding capabilities. Using cables of carbon nanotubes (600 times as strong as steel for the same weight) you can run an elevator up to geosynchronous orbit. Then you can run a tether outward from geosync. Simply releasing a payload from the end of the outer tether provides enough velocity to get to Jupiter, let alone Mars. Where does the energy come from? From the rotation of the Earth.
That sounds correct. Buzz also has a cool “Doctor Rendezvous” idea for a series of space stations that do nothing but provide habitat and workspace for humans who use the stations’ orbits to hitchhike to Mars. At that point they hop in their landers and blast off for the Martian surface, while the stations continue their long orbits.