Nuclear Thermal Rockets

Popular Mechanics is reporting that the Pentagon wants to launch a Nuclear Thermal Rocket in 4 years. It appears that DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has announced they have selected the following contractors to start Phase 1 of this project: General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, and Blue Origin. The main goal to create a spacecraft that can travel from Earth orbit to Lunar orbit and back faster and more efficiently than chemical rockets. Eventually, these nuclear thermal rockets will be able to reach other places within our solar system. They expect a trip from Earth to Mars would take half the time it takes now with traditional chemical rockets.

The name of this project is DRACO, which stands for Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations.

You can read the entire Popular Mechanics article here.