Getting to Mars is no easy feat: the journey of several hundred million miles takes about nine months, one-way, and a manned mission will likely in total take about three years.

So one scientist took a look at different types of propulsion - including nuclear - to find out if there was a quicker way to get there.

But it seems that, aside from an engineering breakthrough, we can’t really shorten these times - and he thinks it’s unlikely we’ll send humans in five decades, unlike the 2030s as Nasa believes.

Bull puckey. That may be true for NASA, particularly in lieu of all the budget cuts, but it isn't true for the DoD black budget programs. We have the technology to go a lot further than Mars, if we brought it out into the light.  To read more, click here.