The Hill reports NASA has budget to resume work on so-called “nuclear thermal propulsion” for space travel. Not a new idea, NASA had Lockheed Missiles & Space working on this back in the 1960s at the Sunnyvale, CA plant.
Fresh out of college, I worked at the Lockheed facility but not on the NASA contract. At the time we built Agena second stages for the Air Force and Polaris missiles for the Navy. That LMSC had a NASA contract to develop a nuclear rocket motor was known, the rest was compartmentalized and secret.
If you wait long enough, changed circumstances sometimes give old ideas a second bite at life’s apple. This last is a classic usage from the fourth Potter novel of J.K.Rowling.
