Ain't Nothing Gonna Break Our Stride

For some bizarre reason, Newton's third law of motion always stuck in my head from my schooldays long after most of the rest of what we were taught has been replaced by what day to put the bins out and 80's song lyrics (who needs to know Henry VIII's wives when you can still sing along to 'Break My Stride' 40 years later) but Newton's third really stuck.
As anyone who just hums along to Matthew Wilder's classic tune can tell you, Newtons 3rd Law of Motion is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction which is why Rockets can launch from Earth because when a rocket's engine expels exhaust gas in one direction, the gas pushes back on the rocket with an equal force in the opposite direction and up it goes, ain't nothing gonna break it's stride, nobody gonna slow it down, oh no, It's got to keep on moving as it were.
That lengthy introduction through 80's nostalgia is a happy segue into news that NASA are looking to introduce Nuclear Engines to their Space rockets which will half the time it takes to get to wherever we point it towards with Mars being the most obvious destination in what was a 6-9 month trip now reduced to 3-4.
So what you may think, our nearest Solar System is 4.37 light-years (about 25 trillion miles) away from Earth and would take roughly 75,000 years traveling at our current top speeds so half that is still 12.5 trillion miles and a 37,500 year long trip which is a fair point which is why nobody is talking about that, it's the Red Planet we are looking at and who knows, they may be looking right back and thinking Gawd, i hope them awful Earthlings don't come here.
There has long been debate about life on Mars and if there is life underground, inside it's salt crusts or in a dormant state and we know from our own planet how resilient and adaptive life can be so I am all for anything that can improve our odds of getting to Mars and back again because we're on a roll and we pray it lasts, yes the road behind was rocky but now we're feeling cocky and we can look at Mars and we see our past, that's the reason why we're running so fast as some curly haired performer almost said.