Story thread · 3 reports / 2 sources

The space race has gone nuclear

deseret.com · 3dShare

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman walked with his shoulders bent forward and his head slightly down at Idaho National Laboratory on Friday, as he listened intently to John C. Wagner, the lab’s director, explain the facility’s work to bring nuclear energy to space. INL and NASA, under the leadership of Wagner and Isaacman, have aligned to accomplish several ambitious goals. First, that by December 2028, NASA will launch Space Reactor-1 Freedom (SR-1) off the Earth’s crust and send it to Mars. It will travel 140 million miles to the red planet, they hope, by the power of fission. Second, by 2030, they will deploy a compact nuclear reactor to the moon to power a permanent human base. When Isaacman was sworn in by the Senate last December, he promised to focus NASA on accomplishing the near-impossible and bring in private industry to make it happen. His visit to INL on Friday showed that promise becoming reality. Accompanied by a flock of other NASA officials in suits, Isaacman met with se

First report: WATCH LIVE: NASA administrator to visit Idaho National Laboratory — localnews8.com, 4d