Should NASA go to Mars or back to the Moon?

Shuttles are nice but as they are limits to low earth orbit at the very best they should not be the main focus of a space program

the shuttles are ancient, and never did what they were designed to do, and it is an embarrassment that they have been the main focus of the space program for as long as they have been.

use it to run mass drivers and lasers to power solar sails, and let's REALLY get going!

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use it to run mass drivers and lasers to power solar sails, and let's REALLY get going!

Please do not forget about nuclear bombs push plate rockets that could move ten of thousands of tons of cargo from one end of the solar system to another beginning on the moon surface.

No problems with atmosphere fallout as on earth. All we need to do is get the infrastructure to build most of such ships parts on the moon.

It's been a while since I've read up on it, but you get a REALLY BIG push when you set off a nuclear bomb under your armored plate.

We're talking carrier-sized spaceships, not dinky little shuttles.

If you're going nuclear, why not just use the heat from a reactor to accelerate water?

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If you're going nuclear, why not just use the heat from a reactor to accelerate water?

The design of a push plate rocket given the small bombs is very simple with very little to go wrong and it can move ocean freighter loads of men and cargo anywhere in the system.

So why fool around with something like a complex nuclear reactor that can do less or at best no more then a push plate rocket?

It seems to me that when you're being propelled by atomic bombs, lots can go wrong. My way is less dramatic

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It seems to me that when you're being propelled by atomic bombs, lots can go wrong. My way is less dramatic

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What could go wrong????????

Less dramatic also does not mean safer or better just less dramatic.

Do you think that just because someone states a fantastical theory that's never been attempted, it means it will actually work easily?

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Do you think that just because someone states a fantastical theory that's never been attempted, it means it will actually work easily?

The work had been done by some of the best scientists of the time who in fact were the ones who developed our whole nuclear technology and under a government program.

We could have done it with the 1950s technology it is not a big deal and a lot of the work on it is now unclassified and can be found online.

Models using non-nuclear bombs was flown as a matter of fact.

In fact the only thing that is still classified as far as I know is the technology to build the very small nuclear bombs needed.

It is very simple and therefore not a great engineering challenge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

Numerous model flight tests (using conventional explosives) were conducted at Point Loma in 1959. On November 14, the one-meter model, called "Hot Rod" (or "putt-putt"), first flew using RDX (chemical explosives) in a controlled flight for 23 seconds to a height of 56 meters. Film of the tests has been transcribed to video[15] shown on the BBC TV program "To Mars by A-Bomb" in 2003 with comments by Freeman Dyson and Arthur C. Clarke. The model landed by parachute undamaged and is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Here is the link to the model flight on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQCrPNEsQaY