I love the idea of nuclear fission space propulsion. But, this concept doesn't look even mildly realistic. The first fission-electric rocket in space isn't goin

I love the idea of nuclear fission space propulsion. But, this concept doesn't look even mildly realistic. The first fission-electric rocket in space isn't going be f'ing 10 gigawatts [0]: it's going to be 5-6 orders of magnitude smaller, it's going to be conservatively designed and cautiously iterated, in a way that gets useful engineering data even if it doesn't work the first time (it won't). This craziness is an Nth-of-a-kind iteration you might consider attempting, >20 years* after your 1st success, after >20 years of sustained development effort. It's not a near-future plausibility. *(Coincidentally, the first serious project was cancelled about 20 years before the present day [1]. That would have been an interesting alternate history...) [0] https://www.howeindustries.net/ppr https://www.howeindustries.net/ppr [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Orbiter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Orbiter edit: To explain my reasoning a little: 10 gigawatts is gigantic amount of violently destructive energy—thermal energy, radiation energy, mechanical and vibrational [2] energy—you're trying to squeeze into a lightweight, complex, mass-optimized aerospace device that needs to run unattended and without maintenance for many years, without failing. That's probably very hard to get right. There have been many nuclear electric reactors in space already, but remarkably none of them, in operation, had any moving parts! They were all solid-state thermoelectric converters. I believe the bulk of that design choice boils down to "it's simple and conservative". Thermoelectrics aren't impressive by any other metric—just simplicity. Even the first, smallest nuclear electric turbine in space will be a majorly impressive achievement, for whoever succeeds at it. [2] Let's not forget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_project#High_gain_antenna_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_project#High_gain_ante...