Jan 192018
There are those in NASA who have had the crazy idea that maybe, just maybe, NASA should live up to its mandate and actually move outwards into the cosmos. In order to do that, you need power, and until magic comes along, nuclear power is best power. Yesterday there was a media event in support of the “Kilopower” initiative to develop one-to-ten kilowatt nuclear power reactors. Given that the SP-100 project to develop 100 kilowatt reactors began on the order of 40 years ago, one kilowatt seems kinda unaggressive…but given that right now the United States has *no* kilowatt reactors under development for space power… I’ll take it.