re: 96 days round trip to Mars!
You sound ever so slightly like those who poo pooed Gorddard's work on rockets in the 1920s.
It is not mythological or a Buck Rogers propulsion systems. Do a google on "Magnetized Beamed Plasma Propulsion" or MagBeam.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002406.html
If you had a propulsion system which would provide constant accelerate at one g you could reach Mars in a little less than 3.5 days even the worst alignment would be only a little over 6 days!
