Earth also doesn't have any nuclear powered rovers driving on the surface and yet Mars does. Might have something to do with the fact that the risk to humans on Mars is slightly lower than on Earth,no?
French EVs are over 70% nuclear powered. We just keep the nuclear generators stationary and use battery buffers in the car to save weight.
You might argue it's about risk, but that didn't seem like such a huge deal when we tried to make nuclear cars and planes back in the 50s. RTGs are just incredibly inefficient, and properly shielded fission reactors are incredibly heavy.
Yeah, the 1950s involved serious consideration of some truly horrific nuclear flight concepts, so I wouldn't be so dismissive of risk as a factor. Not like airliner crashes are awesome, but they don't drop a reactor core on whatever they crash into. Not to mention proliferation concerns, operator staffing requirements, security staffing requirements. There's very straightforward reasons nuclear powered flight on earth never went past the earliest exploration of a couple prototypes. Russia is working on a nuclear powered cruise missile and has already had one serious mishap with it.
Yes, but also that you can't refill with gas on Mars. And of course we do have nuclear powered vehicles cruising around on Earth. We have also had nuclear powered bombers and cruise missiles, none of which were exactly successful, but not even the US DoD has ever suggested a nuclear powered helicopter. It would be a great introduction to our relationship with Mars if one of the first things we ever did was to spill plutonium across its surface when the helo crashed (as it would, eventually).
"This incident resulted in the NASA Safety Committee requiring intact reentry in future RTG launches, which in turn impacted the design of RTGs in the pipeline."
We developed them during the Cold War. The issue was the massive release of radiation behind them. Don't fly it over your own country. But they can cruise for days!
