More Reading

Space Exploration
Nuclear Propulsion: Getting More Miles per Gallon
Astrodigital compares the cost and effectiveness of a mission to mars using both chemical rockets and those powered by nuclear fission.

NASA
Fission Propulsion
A summary of the history of nuclear fission propulsion and the work being done at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Provides a good overview of how fission works.

Icarus Interstellar
Evaluation of Application of the Gas Core Nuclear Reactor to the Icarus Mission
An evaluation of the potential drawbacks and challenges to using a gas core reactor to power a spacecraft.

Harnessing Nuclear Energy to go Farther than Ever Before
Humans have been utiliizing nuclear energy for several decades now. The amount of energy obtained from nuclear fission is massive, and could be engineered to provide the energy for a deep space mission. The concept of a fission rocket would be to utilize the heat from a nuclear reaction to heat up a propellant, such as hydrogen gas, and then disperse it through a nozzle to obtain thrust, much like a chemical rocket. Fission rockets would provide a significant performance boost over chemical rockets, and would consume much less propellant. This would allow for expeditions to destinations farther from Earth than can currently be reached, at much faster velocities. The downside is that the exhaust from such systems could potentially be radioactive. There is currently ongoig research to find ways to neutralize this radiation so that space missions using nuclear fuel would be a viable option.

"In conclusion then, the navigation of interplanetary space depends for its solution on the problem of atomic disintegration... Thus, something impossible will probably be accomplished through something else which has always been held equally impossible, but which remains so no longer"
A prophecy by Robert H. Goddard in 1907

More Reading

Fission Rockets

Schematic of a Nuclear Fission Rocket