Robert Heinlein, writing in the the 1950's, used to have families cruising around the solar system via simple nuclear powered rockets (I remember the family discussion of the merits of different rocket models in The Rolling Stones - also known as Space Family Stone) and it may yet turn out that nuclear propulsion will be what gets astronauts around in future.
This report notes that NASA has had highly variable funding for nuclear rockets over the years, but they still think it has a lot of merit and may yet re-fund it to more realistic levels.
It's always going to be a bit controversial, though, getting the fuel into space on the top of a controlled explosion.
Speaking of Heinlein, I've recently bought a couple of Charles Sheffield novels from second hand stores. I've been reading him on and off for years, and am currently half way through The Web Between the Worlds.
He really does strike me as writing very much in the style of early Heinlein. He is more technically minded, but the way he sketches characters, has a basic optimism for the future of humanity, only ever implies sex and never describes it, and throws in the occasional off hand bit of future quirk (of the type "the door dilated", or "he took a bulb of beer") reminds me of Heinlein all the time.
I find him a very entertaining science fiction writer, and it's a pity he does not quite seem to have had the recognition he deserved. (He died a few years back.)
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