First mission to bring back samples from the moon since 1976 started successfully

[Mnementh]

Nighthawk117 said:

SvennoJ said:

True, submarines have been nuclear powered since 1955. There must be a reason NASA hasn't jumped on that ship yet. Maybe it's all a PR problem or all the shaking during launch isn't very good for nuclear engines.

Ah I see they just got back on track. Scrapped in 1970, $125 million granted in 2019 to continue with the nuclear rocket program. Nice.

Yes, the NERVA program ended around 1970.  They had the Prometheus program in the 80s or 90s.  Not sure what the new name is now.

You don't want a nuclear powered rocket to get you off the Earth - hell people are scared enough of RTGs.  You want chemical rocket engines to get you off the Earth, but to go from Earth orbit to deep space, a nuclear powered engine is far away, the most efficient way to travel.

Are you sure? The main reason it takes so long to get to Mars is, that the probes aren't under full thrust the whole time. Because fuel would be needed, which in turn would need to be accelerated at first which needs more fuel to accelerate all the fuel. I don't see how nuclear propellants solve that problem.

If I look here, I see the proposed nuclear rocket engines, they are hypothetical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_engine#Nuclear