u/JigglymoobsMWO

When NASA first announced the mission, I thought it was going to be a vanity project that will never actually happen.

Now this Science news article makes clear that this thing has a good chance of just going ahead. Nobody who they interviewed said it couldn’t be done. The engines are apparent reappropriated from the Lunar express station. The strange part is that Isaacman even said the reactors already “mostly built”.

That begs the question: is this reactor not a prototype? Is there a classified constellation out there? If not why would they have a flight ready reactor “mostly built” just sitting around? Even if they were playing around with reactors, how can they be so confident in the whole power propulsion architecture that no one even blinks about launching a mission in two years? We’ve seen crossovers from classified programs before with Hubble, Nancy Grace. Interesting times.