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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5275829" data-attributes="member: 177">That is not exactly true.  We can design and build appropriate rockets, but are not in possession of them this instant.  Tomorrow, or next year, would not be an option, as designing and building "heavy-lift" capacity is not like designing and building a new car.  The (now canceled) Constellation program was intending to use current known principles (chemical rockets), but largely new designs.  They planned to start tech development in 2005, with first manned flight in 2014.  First flight to the Moon was set for 2019.  So, we're talking 9 to 14 years using largely known technologies.  Call it a round decade.Now, with a whole lot of money, and a less conservative idea of what counts as "acceptable risk", you can do this sort of thing in less than nine years - but doing that you may also end up with dead astronauts and wasting a lot of money on an abject failure.Unless you want to spray a whole lot of fallout on living people, there is no known nuclear option that you can use to get into orbit.  Nuclear options are good for use outside the atmosphere, not within it, and are better for low-thrust (long distance) travel, rather than boosting off a planetary surface.Well, to go to the Moon, you don't need a whole lot of shielding.  To go to Mars, you need that shielding.  But, while simple in concept, it is expensive in practice.  Unless you first build a Moon station that can produce it, every single ounce of your shielding has to come from the surface of the Earth.  That is expensive.</blockquote>

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