When VASIMIR, a plasma rocket engine, gets perfected it could get the travel time to Mars down to about 39 days. There is a prototype of VASIMIR that is supposed to be tested on the ISS pretty soon.
Yes, Plasma rocket is the rocket for manned flight to Mars.
It’s still 39 days... times 2, plus the time on Mars... but that’s a lot better than a year.
As for the time on Mars, perhaps we could best prepare for that by landing earth-moving robots on the planet hand having them dig some big tunnels for radiation-proof living.
The story regarding radiation isn’t discussed much, because we are still so far away from an actual launch.
But it is a big, big story.
True enough. Standard rockets are horse and buggy stuff.
A typical trip to the moon is a few minutes of acceleration burning massive amounts of fuel, followed by a day and a half of coasting till you start accelerating into the moon’s gravity well.