No, the larger nuclear power plants (50kWe) NASA has developed to reasonable TRL are still around the same power to weight ratio. Nuclear, in addition to everyt

No, the larger nuclear power plants (50kWe) NASA has developed to reasonable TRL are still around the same power to weight ratio. Nuclear, in addition to everything else like the dynamo and the reactor itself, requires heavy radiators. Also, Kilopower has a SHORTER lifespan of about 15 years whereas solar can last 30-50 years (solar degradation is much slower than is often claimed, at least when we’ll engineered and in the absence of high humidity) as there’s no moving parts and nothing to refuel. Remember, terrestrial nuclear reactors are regularly refueled (annually?) and maintained. The traditional argument has always been that nuclear scales better than solar, but usually such comparisons are looking at sandbagged, outdated solar panels and very low-TRL nuclear designs relying on super high rejection temperatures (ie unrealistic) or shorter lifespans. I’m not anti-nuclear by any stretch, and I fully support increased funding and deployment of nuclear power, but I think there has been a lot of hand waving by some nuclear advocates. If you look at actually achievable, near term nuclear designs, none of them perform anywhere near as good as solar does in orbit near 1AU, and it’s not even close. It’s surface applications or outer solar system where nuclear has a chance against solar. Outside of those cases, solar is much more powerful for a given weight (meaning cheaper to transport) plus being far cheaper to build and not requiring special launch vehicle risk mitigations (currently, the only nuclear-rated launch vehicle is Atlas V… and every nuclear launch must be approved by the executive branch). (A human Mars base may benefit from a mix of power sources for resiliency purposes.)