Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 20:28:19 -0400
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] Back to the future... to Mars
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Excerpt:
As early as November 1957 - the same month the Soviet Union launched the
dog Laika into Earth orbit on board Earth's second artificial satellite,
the 508-kilogram Sputnik 2 - about 20 engineers at Lewis Research Center,
a National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics laboratory in Cleveland,
Ohio, commenced research into nuclear-thermal, chemical, and electric
(ion) rocket propulsion for interplanetary flight and other applications.
When NASA opened its doors on 1 October 1958, Lewis became a NASA center.
In April 1959, the Lewis researchers testified to Congress about their
work and solicited funding for a focused Mars expedition study. Congress
agreed to support the study - the first piloted nuclear-propulsion Mars
expedition study ever performed by a U.S. government agency, and one of
the first detailed Mars expedition studies ever.

For their analysis, which formally concluded in October 1960, the Lewis
researchers assumed a Mars mission profile that would, by the end of
1960s, come to be seen as wholly conventional. In a January 1961 paper
that summed up their study, they wrote that the mission would begin with
the Mars spacecraft in orbit about the Earth. The seven-man spacecraft
would either be launched from Earth's surface as a single unit by an
enormous rocket or launched in parts by smaller rockets and assembled in
orbit. Following checkout, a high-thrust nuclear-thermal rocket engine
would launch the spacecraft from Earth orbit onto a transfer trajectory to
Mars.
--- end excerpt ---

<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/nasas-first-piloted-nuclear-rocket-mars-study-1961/>

        mark