Interplanetary travel is pretty arduous based on current technology – chemical rockets and solar-powered ion-drives. Back in the late 1960s NASA was seriously developing a nuclear rocket called NERVA, but it wasn’t really much of an improvement on chemical rockets for anything other than trips to the Moon. NERVA’s exhaust velocity was about 8,500 m/s
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Venus is currently drier than a bone. But the high deuterium ratio in the atmosphere hints at isotopic fractionation of a LOT of water in the deep past. Enough for a shallow ocean, or perhaps a deeper one with a bit of tweaking. That’s uncontroversial in most planetological discussions, but what is difficult to determine
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Getting around the planets has one major challenge – cosmic rays. A continual shower of high-energy particles that electrocute cells with every passage through our bodies is a slow way to get cancer and degrade one’s nervous system. Now an engineer has a better idea… Forget rockets – go to Mars in a cosmic fruit
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Dreary mornings on Titan… Forecasters predict morning drizzle on Titan – space – 11 October 2007 – New Scientist Space …that lurid orange sky that Huygens showed us could really get to me after a while. A light rain would be a welcome change. When Bussard fusors are up and running a shuttle to Titan
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