NASA Chief Jared Isaacman visited the Idaho National Laboratory on August 14 to discuss the progress they could make on creating a nuclear-powered spacecraft in the Administration’s commitment to beat China in the new “space race.” The Idaho lab is tasked with developing a nuclear-powered space engine, Freedom-1, for possible travel to Mars. The Administration has set spring 2028 as the target for accomplishing this task in preparation for a December test launch that same year. Here too, Isaacman wants the US to be “first” in this development ahead of any nuclear-powered engine the Chinese may be in the process of developing.
“America will win the second space race,” Isaacman claimed. “We will return to the Moon. We will build the Moon base and master the skills needed for where we go next, but the ship that will take us there will trace its origins to the work we do today.” Isaacman underlined that work should continue on the lunar mission simultaneously with preparing a future mission to Mars.
The Idaho lab had its origins in the initial work to build a nuclear plant to power a submarine in the early 1950s, a unique project launched almost single-handedly by Admiral Hyman Rickover. The development of the first prototype submarine reactor in Idaho was led by Edwin Kintner, who would later work with the Fusion Energy Foundation in the 1980s in his capacity as the head of ERDA’s fusion energy department.
While the new “space race” with China has clear geopolitical overtones, and may even have the more sinister notion of the US in some way “controlling” space exploration, it’s not at all clear the US has the ability to “win” that race. China will be sending Chang’e-7 to land on the Moon’s South Pole this month, also the area on the Moon targeted by the first US mission as the site for a US base. While China reportedly is working on a lithium-cooled fission reactor for possible rocket propulsion, they have made no announcement of any launches in that respect, and remain publicly concentrated on their own space station and the planned International Lunar Research Station, which they will develop together with Russia. Russia, on the other hand, is doing advanced work on a nuclear-powered “space tug” for deep space missions and may well have the advantage over the US in that field.
While space exploration is once again re-starting, as it did in the Cold War, as a result of a “space race,” like the earlier US-Soviet space race, today’s could also be transformed into a project aimed at the good of all mankind. No single nation will be able to “control” the vastness of space and “space-faring nations” are today on the increase. The difficulties entailed in possible “colonization” or even “source utilization” of other planets is so difficult—and risk-filled—that only cooperation between nations will allow it to happen without serious mishaps.
