Nuclear propulsion - political suicide

There are a lot of ideas mixed together here, which might be better
separated. I think any plan to send humans directly from Earth to Mars and
back in the near future will cost $ trillions (10 to the 12th $) using
nuclear, solar thermal or what-ever, which is so much of the worlds
industrial wealth, that it will not fly, and it is a waste of time to plan
it. There will be no profit in it, the technologies needed are not
available yet. When we are operating in cis-lunar space, retrieving
minerals from NEOs, maybe mining Phobos and Deimos, then going to Mars will
be possible. Not before.
Uranium on Earth is concentrated by moving water, powered by sunshine.
These processes will not happen on asteroids or the Moon, and so probably
Uranium will not be concentrated enough in space to justify mining. But
He-3 might be used to power He-3/H-2 fusion, which could be (after more
development) used in rockets. About this John S. Lewis claims, last
sentence of chapter 13, Mining the Sky, Helix Books, @ 1996, "... if we
master helium-3/deuterium fusion, The solar system is ours to take." Of
course that is a big IF, as we (the industrial nations of Earth) have spent
around $ 100 billion trying to do that over the past 50 years, and have yet
to get close to mastering it.
So I come back to the issue of what can we do in the near future. And
again the answer for me is go to the Moon and develop the resources in
cis-lunar space. The bigger plans will take care of them selves once the
cis-lunar infrastructure (for tourist, SPS, the high frontier, etc.) begins
to be developed.
Sincerely,
Jay Huebner at jhuebn@...