Nuclear propulsion: bringing human presence to Mars

Palaszewski discusses nuclear propulsion. In January, an extensive national team of NASA, Aerojet Rocketdyne and many others completed new nuclear thermal propulsion, NTP, and nuclear electric propulsion Mars Transport Vehicle designs, in which hydrogen would be heated in a nuclear reactor and released out of a nozzle to create thrust. The mission architecture includes assembly and checkout of such a vehicle in a lunar distant high-Earth orbit. Components would be delivered by multiple NASA Space Launch System and SpaceX Starship rockets. Efficiency would be achieved by dropping off hydrogen tanks as they are emptied on the way to Mars, with the number of tanks tailored to the mission needs.