NASA chief: U.S. won't go it alone on manned Mars mission

NASA chief: U.S. won't go it alone on manned Mars mission – USATODAY.com


Comment:

How might this be accomplished? With a VASIMIR? Let's look at that possibility.

Speculation alert:

In an earlier post, I discussed the possibility of lifting a molten salt nuclear reactor to space.  Although Zubrin says a nuclear reactor would weigh 7000 tons, that may be incorrect.  A 50 MW molten salt reactor may be doable at around 50 tons. If so, some interesting possibilities arise with respect to thermoelectrics.  Here's a couple articles I found on the subject below:


  Next Big Future: Thermoelectric materials produced via microwave in...: Rapid Microwave Synthesis of Indium Filled Skutterudites: An energy efficient route to high performance thermoelectric materials Filled sk...

  Next Big Future: BMW Turbosteamer and Thermoelectric Generator are ...: BMW (Car maker) has a Turbosteamer and Thermoelectric Generator (TEG) projects. They are focused on generating electric current from waste ...

The point in these two articles is that sufficient electricity could be generated from a thermoelectric device to run the VASIMIR.  Franklin Chang Diaz says his VASIMIR could get to Mars with 1 MW solar array, but a nuclear power source could do it faster.

The amount of electricity from theromoelectrics is still too inefficient, but there's no moving parts, and you could generate much more electricity from other means as well.  Even with thermoelectrics, you could generate enough for propulsion.  The rest could be backup and heat management.  Or just make the reactor smaller.  You may not need that much juice.

Assuming that you could do the nuclear reactor, then how do you get there? In a Nautilus-X.

 


Hook up the nuclear reactor to the VASIMIR and the NAUTILUS, and off you go.