I support this very much because the technology is there, and I firmly believe we should put good use to everything we know about nuclear into exploring the universe. It takes 9 months to fly to Mars with the propulsion devices we currently use. Nuclear propulsion can get you to Mars in two weeks.. 

I urge everyone to sign up. This could change the future of mankind for the greater good.

source: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=26152

Link for petition

It doesn't matter what part of the world you're from, I believe anyone can sign the petition as long as you create a White House account.

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Article explaining more:

Tim Folger and Les Johnson (NASA MSFC) stood last summer in front of a nuclear rocket at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Johnson’s work in advanced propulsion concepts is well known to Centauri Dreams readers, but what he was talking to Folger about in an article for National Geographic was an older technology. NERVA, once conceived as part of the propulsion package that would send astronauts to Mars, had in its day the mantle of the next logical step beyond chemical propulsion. A snip from the story:

Johnson looks wistfully at the 40,000-pound engine in front of us… “If we’re going to send people to Mars, this should be considered again,” Johnson says. “You would only need half the propellant of a conventional rocket.” NASA is now designing a conventional rocket to replace the Saturn V, which was retired in 1973, not long after the last manned moon landing. It hasn’t decided where the new rocket will go. The NERVA project ended in 1973 too, without a flight test. Since then, during the space shuttle era, humans haven’t ventured more than 400 miles from Earth.

I’m looking forward to getting back to Huntsville and seeing Les, as well as a number of other friends in the interstellar community, at the 2nd Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop, coming up this February, where it may be that NERVA will have a place in the discussion of how we go about building a system-spanning civilization. You’ll want to give Folger’s article a look for comments not only from Les but Freeman Dyson and Andreas Tziolas (from the Icarus team), as well as Elon Musk, the 100 Year Starship’s Mae Jemison, and NASA’s Mason Peck.

Image: NERVA nuclear rocket being tested. (Smithsonian Institution Photo No. 75-13750).

In fact, there are a number of issues presented here that I’ll want to get back to later, but I can’t cover the rest of the story today. I’m all but out the door for a brief but intense period of Tau Zero work that will leave me no time to keep up regular posts here or even to moderate comments. More about this later, and more about Folger’s essay as well, and please bear with me through the temporary slowdown. Things should get back to normal by mid-day Thursday.

Speaking of NERVA, though, I’ll leave you with an interesting petition Gregory Benford alerted me to with regard to the development of nuclear thermal rockets, one that calls for an effort to:

Harness the full intellectual and industrial strength of our universities, national laboratories and private enterprise to rapidly develop and deploy a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) adaptable to both manned and un-manned space missions. A NTR (which would only operate in outer space) will jump-start our manned space exploration program by reducing inner solar system flight times from months to weeks. This is not new technology; NTRs were tested in the 1960s (President Kennedy was a guest at one test). The physics and engineering are sound. In addition to inspiring young Americans to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, a working NTR will herald a speedy and economical expansion of the human presence in the cosmos.

Going significantly beyond the Moon demands advances in propulsion of the kind that nuclear thermal rockets can deliver. Getting NERVA concepts out of mothballs and updating them with modern materials are necessary steps as we push out into the Solar System.

Signed.

Sounds good. But we know we have accidents and rockets explode. Not sure if this rocket would be similar to a nuke bomb going off, but its a concern of mine and I'm sure those living in Florida and other areas where rockets blast off. However, I'm probably being a little naive here and in reality this type of explosion would not be the same.

I acknowledge your concern, and I'm certain they'll only use the rocket in space far enough where its safe. Its the smartest thing they could do imo

For over the last 13 years, I've been a huge supporter of the Gas Core Nuclear Rocket (GCNR) concept, ever since I saw the Discovery TV program "Rocketships," narrated by Kate Mulgrew.

On the show was a scientist named Dr. Steve Howe, I became an instant fan of his after listening to him on that show. He is one of the foremost experts on nuclear rocket propulsion, and has worked on the GCNR.

Here's more info on the GCNR from Wikipedia:

The final classification (of nuclear thermal rockets) is the gas-core engine. This is a modification to the liquid-core design which uses rapid circulation of the fluid to create a toroidal pocket of gaseous uranium fuel in the middle of the reactor, surrounded by hydrogen. In this case the fuel does not touch the reactor wall at all, so temperatures could reach several tens of thousands of degrees, which would allow specific impulses of 3000 to 5000 seconds (30 to 50 kN·s/kg). In this basic design, the "open cycle", the losses of nuclear fuel would be difficult to control, which has led to studies of the "closed cycle" or nuclear lightbulb engine, where the gaseous nuclear fuel is contained in a super-high-temperature quartz container, over which the hydrogen flows. The closed cycle engine actually has much more in common with the solid-core design, but this time is limited by the critical temperature of quartz instead of the fuel stack. Although less efficient than the open-cycle design, the closed-cycle design is expected to deliver a rather respectable specific impulse of about 1500–2000 seconds.

Nuclear Lightbulb concept:

A nuclear lightbulb is a hypothetical type of spacecraft engine using a Fission reactor to achieve Nuclear propulsion. Specifically it would be a type of Gas core reactor rocket that separates the nuclear fuel from the coolant/propellant with a quartz wall. It would be operated at such high temperature (approx. 25,000°C) that the vast majority of the electromagnetic emissions would be in the hard ultraviolet range. Fused silica is almost completely transparent to this light, so it would be used to contain the uranium hexafluoride and allow the light to heat reaction mass in a rocket or to generate electricity using a heat engine or photovoltaics.

This type of reactor shows great promise in both of these roles. As a rocket engine it, like all nuclear rocket designs, can greatly exceed the power density of a chemical rocket. However, it also does not involve the release of any radioactive material from the rocket, unlike other nuclear designs which would cause nuclear fallout if used in a planetary atmosphere (e.g. Project Orion). As a method to generate electricity, nuclear lightbulbs are extremely efficient because higher-temperature heat contains more Gibbs free energy than the low-temperature heat produced in current fossil-fuel plants and water-cooled nuclear reactors.

@Nighthawk117
wow, thank you for sharing that. I've never heard of that concept before, and it sounds promising.

c'mon people, spread the word on your facebook or something, and get that petition signed :)