- Joined
- Sep 30, 2013
- Messages
- 61,549
- Reaction score
- 64,721
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Moderate
Mars by 1980 was very doable but Congress killed the program in the early 70's. NERVA was successfully tested, Saturn V was a 100% reliable vehicle that could get us safely to orbit and beyond.
But Congress instead went with the space shuttle and that spelled the eventual doom of NASA and the spaceflight program.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are now driving the space race and I for one am glad that private industry is finally paving the way.
NERVA would never have been cleared. BTW, you can see the NERVA test site on google earth, look for Jackass Flats, you can see the test pad, the rail lines going a few miles back to the underground control room, etc. Also, I read a book that talked about how they decided to see what it would take to cause the rocket and reactor to explode. Not a good idea, it blew radioactive plutonium all over the site, lots of clean up. It was a fascinating program though, JFK even visited the test site once.