Clark Lindsey has a very interesting piece over at Hobbyspace on the prospects for private enterprise beating NASA to Mars (see February 12th entry).

Check out in particular the timeline, which I'd never seen before, but is a reasonable extrapolation of the next few years of progress.

Hobbyspace hits nail on the head

Commenting on the moon-mars panel Hobbyspace notes, "...One aspect of the initiative that will definitely be in trouble under a Democratic administration is the nuclear propulsion and power program (e.g. Reactor research to power journey to Jupiter's moons - Spaceflight Now - Feb.11.04)... However, antinuclear sentiments are extremely strong in the Democratic base and the program would almost certainly be eliminated."

The nuclear issue, above all else, will be the political focal point of the new space policy. It is nuclear power technology which can get us to Mars cheaply. Without it, the astronomical budgets the critics wail about would have some truth.

If the critics kill space nuclear power, they will kill manned space exploration and most of future unmanned exploration too. Or at least kill off American space exploration, for I don't expect the Chinese will limit themselves as well.

Um, nuclear space power may or more likely may not become cheap, but getting to mars with humans is nowhere on radars. Unless you are using some fairyland radars.
Killing off manned space "exploration" for a while might even be a good thing, which doesnt imply killing off manned spaceflight.

Note that the timeline has MirCorp beginning construction of its mini-station in 2007-2008. It is occupied by cosmonauts and space tourists in 2009-2010. Then click on the link: http://www.mir-corp.com/

Nuclear power isn't necessary for Earth orbit. I don't see any near future space tourist vehicle or station using nuclear power because of the bad publicity.

Without nuclear power for manned spaceflight getting beyond LEO is very expensive and getting beyond the inner solar-system is almost impossible.