Gaseous Core Nuclear Thermal Rocket

[cjackson]

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/enginelist.php#id--Gaseous_Core_Nuclear_Thermal_Rocket

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_core_reactor_rocket

How practical would this be? How much of a technological leap would be needed to achieve this?

Would it make outer solar system missions possible?

Could the technology be used for non space applications?

I bring this up because Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey apparently uses something like this.

 

[QuantumPion]

Well we managed to build a fully operational solid core nuclear thermal rocket in the 50's. A closed-cycle gas core reactor is within our capability today I think, if we wanted to. I would guess that any manned mission to Mars would use either nuclear thermal or nuclear electric.