[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                     ACCELERATING DEEP SPACE TRAVEL
                     WITH SPACE NUCLEAR PROPULSION

=======================================================================                                    

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                 SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE AND AERONAUTICS

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                            OCTOBER 20, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-35

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
 
 [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
       
                              __________
 
                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
45-865PDF                    WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
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              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

             HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
             
ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, 
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon                 Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California                 MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan,             BILL POSEY, Florida
    Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico     MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BRAD SHERMAN, California             JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
JERRY McNERNEY, California           MIKE GARCIA, California
PAUL TONKO, New York                 STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
BILL FOSTER, Illinois                YOUNG KIM, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
DON BEYER, Virginia                  JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                JAY OBERNOLTE, California
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAKE ELLZEY, TEXAS
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin                VACANCY
DAN KILDEE, Michigan
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
                                 ------                                

                 Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics

                   HON. DON BEYER, Virginia, Chairman
ZOE LOFGREN, California              BRIAN BABIN, Texas, 
AMI BERA, California                     Ranking Member
BRAD SHERMAN, California             MO BROOKS, Alabama
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              BILL POSEY, Florida
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          YOUNG KIM, California
                        
                        C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                            October 20, 2021

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Don Beyer, Chairman, Subcommittee on 
  Space and Aeronautics, Committee on Science, Space, and 
  Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................     9
    Written Statement............................................    10

Statement by Representative Brian Babin, Ranking Member, 
  Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, Committee on Science, 
  Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...........    11
    Written Statement............................................    13

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................    33
    Written Statement............................................    33

                               Witnesses:

Dr. Roger M. Myers, Co-Chair, Committee on Space Nuclear 
  Propulsion Technologies, National Academies of Sciences, 
  Engineering, and Medicine
    Oral Statement...............................................    15
    Written Statement............................................    17

Dr. Bhavya Lal, Senior Advisor for Budget and Finance, National 
  Aeronautics and Space Administration
    Oral Statement...............................................    34
    Written Statement............................................    36

Mr. Greg Meholic, Senior Project Leader, The Aerospace 
  Corporation
    Oral Statement...............................................    41
    Written Statement............................................    43

Mr. Michael French, Vice President, Space Systems, Aerospace 
  Industries Association
    Oral Statement...............................................    50
    Written Statement............................................    52

Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, Founder and CEO, Ad Astra Rocket Company
    Oral Statement...............................................    59
    Written Statement............................................    61

Discussion.......................................................    65

              Appendix: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

Dr. Roger M. Myers, Co-Chair, Committee on Space Nuclear 
  Propulsion Technologies, National Academies of Sciences, 
  Engineering, and Medicine......................................    88

Dr. Bhavya Lal, Senior Advisor for Budget and Finance, National 
  Aeronautics and Space Administration...........................   102

Mr. Greg Meholic, Senior Project Leader, The Aerospace 
  Corporation....................................................   121

Mr. Michael French, Vice President, Space Systems, Aerospace 
  Industries Association.........................................   132

Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, Founder and CEO, Ad Astra Rocket Company   141

 
                     ACCELERATING DEEP SPACE TRAVEL
                     WITH SPACE NUCLEAR PROPULSION

                              ----------                              


                      WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021

                  House of Representatives,
             Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., 
via Zoom, Hon. Don Beyer [Chairman of the Subcommittee] 
presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Chairman Beyer. So, the time having arrived, let me declare 
that this--the hearing will come to order, and without 
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at any 
time. And before I deliver my opening remarks, I want to note 
that the Committee today is meeting virtually, and I hope for 
not much longer, but today is still virtual. I want to announce 
a couple of reminders to the Members about the conduct of this 
hearing. First, Members will please keep their video feed on as 
long as they're present in the hearing. Members are responsible 
for their own microphones. Please also keep your microphones 
muted unless you are speaking. Finally, if Members have 
documents they wish to submit for the record, please e-mail 
them to the Committee Clerk, whose e-mail address was 
circulated prior to the hearing.
    So good morning, and welcome to today's hearing on 
``Accelerating Deep Space Travel with Space Nuclear 
Propulsion.'' I want to welcome our panel of impressive expert 
witnesses today. We're very excited that you accepted our 
invitation, and thank you for being here. If we're serious 
about deep space exploration to Mars with humans, which I am 
serious about, and I know everyone on this Committee is, we 
need to take bold steps to make it happen and make it 
sustainable. Today we're talking about one bold effort that 
could get us much closer to achieving that Mars goal, space 
nuclear propulsion.
    Space nuclear propulsion can produce thrust far more 
efficiently than conventional chemical systems, allowing for 
shorter trip times to Mars. Why does this matter? Well, one 
reason, of course, is that shortening the trip reduces the risk 
of space radiation exposure to our astronauts. Another is that, 
depending on the technology used, space nuclear propulsion may 
enable more frequent trips to Mars than the typical 26-month 
intervals that rely on favorable Mars/Earth alignments. 
Reducing that 26-month interval increases mission flexibility 
to enable both cargo deliveries and human missions to Mars.
    However, building an operational space nuclear propulsion 
system is hard, and the technical challenges are many. Choosing 
a nuclear fuel type and source, developing a space-qualified 
fission reactor, developing the requisite materials and 
infrastructure, and carrying out the testing, all while 
managing the required safety protocols for nuclear activities, 
are just a few examples of those challenges. To date, the 
U.S.'s use of space nuclear technology has been in battery-like 
radioisotope power sources for probes traveling to distances 
where sunlight is insufficient to produce power for the 
spacecraft. But when it comes to propulsion, the United States 
has yet to fly a fully integrated space nuclear propulsion 
system in space.
    You know, government work on space nuclear propulsion dates 
back to the 1960's, but it was curtailed in the 1970's, and 
then follow-on efforts have largely been intermittent since 
that time. That prior work, however, provides a foundation and 
a baseline that's still useful today. A recent NASA (National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration)-commissioned National 
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study on space 
nuclear propulsion found that a system could be ready to 
support a human mission to Mars in 2039--Mr. Perlmutter would 
prefer 2033--but only if we act aggressively now. According to 
the study, the required space nuclear propulsion systems would 
need to be available in 2033 for advanced cargo emplacement and 
risk reduction prior to a human mission. That's slightly more 
than 11 years from now. So if the U.S. is serious about leading 
in a human mission to Mars, we have no time to lose.
    Congress has prioritized development of nuclear space 
propulsion over the past several years, directing about $100 
million annually for NASA to advance nuclear thermal propulsion 
(NTP) capabilities with the goal of conducting a future in-
space flight test. I hope that at today's hearing we can 
examine what progress NASA has made with these dedicated 
investments, and what further investment is needed in order to 
achieve the human to Mars goal in the 2030's, and how can NASA 
leverage other contributions, whether from different parts of 
the U.S. Government or from commercial industry, to reach that 
goal? Because NASA is not alone in seeing the potential for 
space nuclear propulsion. The Defense Advanced Research 
Projects Agency, DARPA, has its own nuclear thermal propulsion 
project, albeit for national security interests. And the 
Department of Energy (DOE), with its nuclear expertise and 
infrastructure, is also involved. We need to see how the 
various agencies are collaborating, including on a government-
wide strategy and vision for space nuclear propulsion.
    So the time to act for America--time for America to act and 
take bold, well-considered, steps toward the goal of sending 
humans to Mars, a goal that will both inspire and lead to 
significant technological advances that will benefit all of us 
here on Earth. Development of space nuclear propulsion is one 
such necessary step, and this Subcommittee has an essential 
role in setting the policy to get us there. I really look 
forward to our witnesses' testimonies.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Beyer follows:]

    Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing on 
``Accelerating Deep Space Travel with Space Nuclear 
Propulsion.''
    I want to welcome our panel of impressive expert witnesses, 
and I thank you for being here today.
    If we're serious about deep space exploration to Mars with 
humans, which I and others on this Subcommittee are, we need to 
take bold steps to make it happen and make it sustainable.
    Today, we're talking about one bold effort that could get 
us much closer to achieving the Mars goal-space nuclear 
propulsion.
    Space nuclear propulsion can produce thrust far more 
efficiently than conventional chemical systems, allowing for 
shorter trip times to Mars.
    Why does this matter? One reason is that shortening the 
trip reduces the risk of space radiation exposure to our 
astronauts.
    Another is that, depending on the technology used, space 
nuclear propulsion may enable more frequent trips to Mars than 
the typical 26-month intervals that rely on favorable Earth and 
Mars alignment. Reducing that 26-month interval increases 
mission flexibility to enable both cargo deliveries and human 
missions to Mars.
    However, building an operational space nuclear propulsion 
system is hard and the technical challenges are many.
    Choosing a nuclear fuel type and source, developing a 
space-qualified fission reactor, developing the requisite 
materials and infrastructure, and carrying out testing, all 
while managing the required safety protocols for nuclear 
activities, are just a few examples of those challenges.
    To date, the U.S.'s use of space nuclear technology has 
been in battery-like radioisotope power sources for probes 
traveling to distances where sunlight is insufficient to 
produce power for the spacecraft.
    When it comes to propulsion, the United States has yet to 
fly a fully integrated space nuclear propulsion system in 
space. Government work on space nuclear propulsion dates back 
to the 1960s, was curtailed in the early 1970s, but follow-on 
efforts have largely been intermittent since that time.
    That prior work, however, provided a foundation and a 
baseline that is still useful today.
    A recent NASA-commissioned National Academies of Sciences, 
Engineering, and Medicine study on space nuclear propulsion 
found that a system could be ready to support a human mission 
to Mars in 2039, but only if we act aggressively now.
    According to the study, the required space nuclear 
propulsion systems would need to be available in 2033 for 
advanced cargo emplacement and risk reduction prior to a human 
mission. That's slightly more than 11 years from now.
    If the United States is serious about leading in a human 
mission to Mars, we have no time to lose.
    Congress has prioritized development of nuclear space 
propulsion over the past several years, directing about $100 
million annually for NASA to advance nuclear thermal propulsion 
capabilities with the goal of conducting a future in-space 
flight test.
    I hope that at today's hearing we can examine what progress 
NASA has made with these dedicated investments, and what 
further investment is needed in order to achieve the human to 
Mars goal in the 2030s. And how can NASA leverage other 
contributions, whether from different parts of the U.S. 
government or from commercial industry, to reach that goal?
    Because NASA is not alone in seeing the potential for space 
nuclear propulsion. The Defense Advanced Research Projects 
Agency-DARPA-has its own nuclear thermal propulsion project, 
albeit for national security interests. And the Department of 
Energy, with its nuclear expertise and infrastructure, is also 
involved.
    We need to see how the various agencies are collaborating, 
including on a government-wide strategy and vision for space 
nuclear propulsion.
    The time is ripe for America to act and take bold, well-
considered, steps towards the goal of sending humans to Mars, a 
goal that will both inspire and lead to significant 
technological advances that will benefit all of us here on 
Earth. Development of space nuclear propulsion is one such 
necessary step, and this Subcommittee has an essential role in 
setting the policy to get us there.
    I look forward to our witnesses' testimony.

    Chairman Beyer. And I now recognize my friend, the Ranking 
Member of the Subcommittee, Dr. Babin, for an opening 
statement.
    Mr. Babin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This is going 
to be very interesting, and I'm looking forward to this 
hearing. Space nuclear power and propulsion holds great 
promise. It could lead to faster travel times, less radiation 
exposure for astronauts, greater mission flexibility, and more 
power for operations and instruments. Other nuclear 
applications, like surface reactors, could also support a 
robust space exploration architecture. Nuclear power and 
propulsion for space exploration is not a novel concept. The 
Air Force, the Atomic Energy Commission, and NASA partnered in 
the 1950's and 1960's on Project Rover and the NERVA (Nuclear 
Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications) Program to develop 
nuclear rockets. The SNAP (Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power) 
Program resulted in the launch of a nuclear-powered satellite 
in 1965. The Russians flew Topaz reactors in the 1980's and 
1990's, and NASA has incorporated radio-isotope power systems 
into missions since the dawn of the Space Age.
    Support for new space nuclear projects have come and gone 
over the years as well. The space reactor prototype was 
canceled in the 1990's. Nuclear projects associated with the 
Strategic Defense Initiative and Space Exploration Initiative 
faded with the overarching programs, and Project Prometheus was 
canceled due to budget constraints 15 years ago. If future 
programs are not crafted carefully, with strategic forethought, 
they may fall victim to the very same fate. And as the National 
Academies have pointed out--excuse me, pointed out in their 
report from earlier this year, recent apples to apples trade 
studies comparing NEP (nuclear electric propulsion) and NTP 
systems for a crewed mission to Mars in general, and baseline 
mission in particular, do not exist.
    The Academy also call on NASA to conduct an objective 
comparison of the two systems. Other decisions, such as whether 
HEU (highly enriched uranium) or HALEU (high-assay low-enriched 
uranium) should be used as the fuel, and whether Hall, MPD 
(magnetoplasmadynamic), or VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse 
Magnetoplasma Rocket) should be used for NEP thrusters should 
also be studied further. Extensibility, or the ability of a 
system to be used for future missions, and not be a dead-end 
technology, will also be very important for the future 
viability of nuclear space propulsion.
    Architectures developed for crewed missions, uncrewed 
mission, surface power, low Earth orbit operations, and 
missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond should all build upon 
each other, and leverage previous investments. These space 
architecture trades should not only meet near-term goals, but 
also account for future exploration challenges. What might seem 
ideal in the near term may not be the very best solution in the 
long term. And when budgets get tight, and funding gets 
prioritized, high risk, high reward technologies, like space 
nuclear power and propulsion, have often been left on the 
chopping block. Because of this reality, NASA should evaluate 
extensibility and future strategic decisions regarding space 
nuclear power and propulsion architectures.
    Coordination with other agencies and the private sector 
will also determine the success of space nuclear power and 
propulsion research and development (R&D). The Department of 
Energy has an Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program and a 
Nuclear Reactor Innovation Center. DARPA initiated the DRACO 
(Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations) Program. 
The Strategic Capabilities Office started the Pele Project, and 
DIU (Defense Innovation Unit) issued a solicitation for small 
nuclear-powered space engines. Furthermore, companies like 
BWXT, X-Energy, USNC, and General Atomics have proposed 
technologies that may meet NASA's space exploration needs.
    For NASA's space nuclear power and propulsion efforts to be 
successful, they will have to coordinate with these other 
efforts. Space Policy Directive--excuse me, Space Policy 
Directive 6, the Executive order promoting small modular 
reactors for national defense and space exploration, and the 
Presidential memorandum on launch of spacecraft containing 
space nuclear systems were issued by the last administration to 
enable this coordination. But oversight will be necessary to 
ensure that the agencies follow through. Adhering to the 
national strategy with consistent, steady, and predictable 
investments, coordinated partnerships with other agencies and 
the private sector, and a strategic perspective for exploration 
will all influence whether space nuclear power and propulsion 
will live up to its promise.
    I look very much forward to hearing from our distinguished 
witnesses today, and I yield back the balance of my time, as I 
see I'm at the end. So I yield back. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Babin follows:]

    Space nuclear power and propulsion holds great promise. It 
could lead to faster travel times, less radiation exposure for 
astronauts, greater mission flexibility, and more power for 
operations and instruments. Other nuclear applications like 
surface reactors could also support a robust space exploration 
architecture.
    Nuclear power and propulsion for space exploration is not a 
novel concept. The Air Force, the Atomic Energy Commission, and 
NASA partnered in the 1950s and 60s on Project Rover and the 
Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications (NERVA) program 
to develop nuclear rockets. The Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary 
Power (SNAP) program resulted in the launch of a nuclear-
powered satellite in 1965, the Russians flew TOPAZ reactors in 
the 80s and 90s, and NASA has incorporated Radioisotope Power 
Systems into missions since the dawn of the space age. Support 
for new space nuclear projects have come and gone over the 
years as well. The Space Reactor Prototype was cancelled in the 
90s, nuclear projects associated with the Strategic Defense 
Initiative and the Space Exploration Initiative faded with the 
overarching programs, and Project Prometheus was cancelled due 
to budget constraints 15 years ago.
    If future programs are not crafted carefully with strategic 
forethought, they may fall victim to the same fate. As the 
National Academies pointed out in their report from earlier 
this year, ``[r]ecent, apples-to-apples trade studies comparing 
[nuclear electric propulsion] NEP and [nuclear thermal 
propulsion] NTP systems for a crewed mission to Mars in general 
and the baseline mission in particular do not exist.'' The 
Academy also called on NASA to conduct an objective comparison 
of the two systems. Other decisions such as whether Highly 
Enriched Uranium (HEU) or High Assay Low Enriched Uranium 
(HALEU) should be used as the fuel and whether Hall, MPD, or 
VASMIR should be used for NEP thrusters should also be studied 
further.
    Extensibility, or the ability of a system to be used for 
future missions and not be a ``dead-end'' technology, will also 
be important for the future viability of nuclear space 
propulsion. Architectures developed for crewed missions, 
uncrewed mission, surface power, low-Earth orbit operations, 
and missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond should all build 
upon each other and leverage previous investments. These space 
architecture trades should not only meet near-term goals, but 
also account for future exploration challenges. What might seem 
ideal in the near-term may not be the best solution in the 
long-term. When budgets get tight, and funding gets 
prioritized, high-risk, high-reward technologies like space 
nuclear power and propulsion have often been left on the 
chopping block. Because of this reality, NASA should evaluate 
extensibility in future strategic decisions regarding space 
nuclear power and propulsion architectures.
    Coordination with other agencies and the private sector 
will also determine the success of space nuclear power and 
propulsion research and development. The Department of Energy 
has an Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program and a Nuclear 
Reactor Innovation Center, DARPA initiated the Demonstration 
Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program, the 
Strategic Capabilities Office started the Pele project, the 
Defense Innovation Unit issued a solicitation for small 
nuclear-powered space engines. Furthermore, companies like 
BWXT, X-energy, USNC, and General Atomics have proposed 
technologies that may meet NASA's space exploration needs. For 
NASA's space nuclear power and propulsion efforts to be 
successful, they will have to coordinate with these other 
efforts. The National Strategy for Space Nuclear Power and 
Propulsion (Space Policy Directive 6), the Executive Order 
Promoting Small Modular Reactors for National Defense and Space 
Exploration, and the Presidential Memorandum on Launch of 
Spacecraft Containing Space Nuclear Systems were issued by the 
last Administration to enable this coordination, but oversight 
will be necessary to ensure the agencies follow through.
    Adhering to the National Strategy with consistent, steady, 
and predictable investments; coordinated partnerships with 
other agencies and the private sector; and a strategic 
perspective for exploration will all influence whether space 
nuclear power and propulsion will live up to its promise. I 
look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and yield back 
the balance of my time.

    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Dr. Babin, very much. So if 
there are Members who wish to submit additional opening 
statements, your statements will be added to the record at this 
point. At this time I'd like to introduce our witnesses.
    Dr. Roger Myers is a senior aerospace consultant with more 
than 30 years of experience in space technology development, 
flight programs, in-space mission architecture planning. He 
previously worked at Aerojet Rocketdyne, and held positions at 
NASA's Glenn Research Center. Dr. Myers also served as Co-Chair 
of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine's 
Committee on Space Nuclear Propulsion Technologies. He holds a 
Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton 
University.
    Dr. Bhavya Lal is senior advisor to the NASA Administrator 
for Budget and Finance. Previously Dr. Lal led the space 
technology and policy portfolio at the Institute for Defense 
Analysis, Science and Technology Policy Institute, where she 
led analyses for the White House Office of Science and 
Technology Policy, the National Space Council, and Federal 
Government agencies. She has served on National Academies 
committees, including on the Committee on Space Nuclear 
Propulsion Technologies. She holds a bachelor's and a master's 
degree in nuclear engineering, a master's degree in technology 
policy from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and a 
doctorate in public policy and public administration from 
George Washington University.
    Mr. Greg Meholic is a senior project leader for Civil 
Systems Technology at The Aerospace Corporation, a federally 
funded research and development center dedicated to the 
Nation's space enterprise. Mr. Meholic is the technical 
coordinator for cross-agency projects associated with fission-
based space nuclear propulsion and power (SNPP). His portfolio 
includes launch vehicle concept development and advanced 
propulsion technology planning for future access to space. Mr. 
Meholic holds bachelor's and master's degrees in aerospace 
engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
    Mr. Michael French is Vice President for Space Systems at 
the Aerospace Industries Association. He previously served as 
the Senior Vice President for Commercial Space at Bryce Space 
and Technology and has held Federal Government positions, 
including as NASA's Chief of Staff. Prior to serving in 
government, he practiced law in the defense and aerospace 
sector. Mr. French holds a Bachelor of Science in business 
administration from the University of California Berkeley, and 
a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
    Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz is Chairman and CEO of Ad Astra, or 
Ad Astra, Rocket Company. A former astronaut, Dr. Chang-Diaz 
flew on seven space missions and completed three space walks. 
Dr. Chang-Diaz initiated the VASIMR plasma rocket engine 
project in 1980 at the Johnson Space Center. In 2005 he retired 
from NASA and founded Ad Astra to continue to mature the 
technology through the private sector. Dr. Chang-Diaz has 
received a Ph.D. in applied plasma physics from MIT, and a 
bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University 
of Connecticut.
    As our witnesses should know, you'll each have 5 minutes 
for your spoken testimony. There's a cool little clock on the 
Zoom screen. And your written testimony will be included in the 
record for the hearing. And when you've all completed your 
spoken testimony, we will begin with the difficult questions, 
and each Member will have 5 minutes to question the panel. So 
let's begin with Dr. Myers. Dr. Myers, the floor is yours.

                TESTIMONY OF DR. ROGER M. MYERS,

              CO-CHAIR, COMMITTEE ON SPACE NUCLEAR

          PROPULSION TECHNOLOGIES, NATIONAL ACADEMIES

             OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE

    Dr. Myers. Good morning, Chairman Beyer, Congressman Babin, 
and Members of the Committee. My name is Roger Myers. I'm the 
owner of R. Myers Consulting, the President of the Washington 
State Academy of Sciences, and the Chair of the Washington 
State Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation. I 
served as the Co-Chair, along with Dr. Robert Braun, of the 
Committee on Space Nuclear Propulsion for Human Mars 
Exploration of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, 
and Medicine.
    NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate commissioned 
this study to assess the primary technical and programmatic 
challenges, merits, and risks for developing and demonstrating 
space nuclear propulsion systems for human missions to Mars, 
including both nuclear thermal and nuclear electric technology 
options. Specifically, we were asked to assess these factors 
for a nuclear thermal propulsion system providing 900 second 
specific impulse, and a nuclear electric propulsion system 
providing at least one megawatt of electric power, and a power 
to mass ration that is substantially better than the state-of-
the-art. Additionally, the propulsion systems were to be ready 
for a human mission in 2039, with a round trip time, including 
Mars surface stay, of less than 750 days.
    Based on the input that we gathered, and our committee 
deliberations, we arrived at several consensus findings and 
recommendations. I will discuss only the most important of 
these in my oral testimony because of time limitations. They 
are all addressed in my written testimony. I will first address 
those for nuclear thermal propulsion, and then I will review 
those for nuclear electric propulsion.
    Concerning nuclear thermal propulsion, our key findings 
were, first, we found that there are currently no nuclear 
reactor fuels that can provide the reactor temperatures to 
meet--the required temperatures to meet the required 
performance or engine lifetime. The Committee recommends that 
the characterization of reactor core materials, including fuels 
and moderators, begin immediately, as it is a fundamental risk 
to nuclear thermal propulsion technology. Second, we found that 
technology to store liquid hydrogen in space for the required 
mission durations does not exist. Our committee recommends that 
NASA develop high-capacity liquid hydrogen storage technology 
to meet the 3 to 4 year in-space storage requirement.
    Third, we found that subscale in-space testing of nuclear 
thermal propulsion systems cannot adequately address the 
baseline mission risks, and therefore full-scale integrated 
ground testing of the nuclear thermal system is required. 
Combining this full-scale ground testing with extensive 
modeling and simulation enables the use of the precursor cargo 
missions to Mars to meet the flight qualification requirements 
for the human mission, and eliminates the need for the 
precursor demonstration flights. Our committee recommends 
directly addressing these needs, and adopting this flight 
qualification approach. Finally, our committee found that an 
aggressive program could develop a nuclear thermal propulsion 
system capable of executing the baseline mission in 2039, but 
that major challenges require near-term resolution.
    For nuclear electric propulsion, first, our committee found 
that developing a megawatt class nuclear electric propulsion 
system for the baseline mission will require increasing several 
subsystems' power by orders of magnitude over available 
technology. Second, similar to nuclear thermal propulsion, our 
committee found that subscale in-space flight testing of 
nuclear electric propulsion systems cannot address the risks 
associated with the baseline mission system, but with 
sufficient modeling, and simulation, and ground testing, flight 
qualification requirements can be met by the cargo precursor 
missions. Additionally, nuclear electric propulsion may not 
require fully integrated ground testing. Modular subsystem 
tests at full power may be adequate. Our committee recommends 
directly addressing these needs and adopting this flight 
qualification approach.
    Finally, our committee found that due to low and 
intermittent investment over the past several decades, it is 
unclear if even an aggressive program would be able to develop 
a nuclear electric propulsion system capable of executing the 
baseline mission. To clarify, we're not saying that we--that it 
cannot, but rather that we do not have the data now on which to 
base a good assessment.
    In summary, our committee found that either nuclear thermal 
propulsion or nuclear electric propulsion systems would provide 
substantial benefits to human Mars exploration missions, but 
that both systems have significant technical risk today. There 
is a need for significant investment in both systems before a 
data-driven selection can be made between the two. Thank you 
for the opportunity to testify. I'm happy to answer any 
questions the Subcommittee may have.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Myers follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Beyer. Dr. Myers, thank you very much, and perfect 
timing. In the meantime, I'm in trouble because I neglected to 
recognize the Chair of the Full Committee, the wonderful 
Congresswoman E.B. Johnson, for her opening statement. So, Dr. 
Lal, if you'll allow me to pivot back to the Chair of our 
Committee, I recognize Congresswoman Johnson for her statement.
    Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I 
really appreciate you holding this hearing. For decades the 
space community has identified nuclear propulsion as a required 
and enabling technology for our human exploration goals. Even 
the best chemical propulsion capabilities of today mean long 
travel times to and from Mars, and a long stay on the red 
planet for our astronaut crew. Space nuclear propulsion is a 
capability that can help address the safety of our astronauts 
by reducing their exposure to in-space radiation with shorter 
trips. Reducing the length of time that the first crew stays on 
Mars and--would make the mission more feasible and likely to 
succeed.
    We've talked about this technology for a long time. It has 
been the subject of many studies by NASA, the Department of 
Defense (DOD), and external advisory committees, including one 
led by retired Air Force Lieutenant General Tom Stafford in 
1991. I want to know what we need to do to move from studies 
and talk to meaningful progress. Whether it's R&D investment, 
developing safety standards, or building a STEM (science, 
technology, engineering, and mathematics) pipeline in nuclear 
expertise, I hope our expert witnesses can identify the 
necessary actions for advancing space nuclear propulsion, and 
doing so safely. This capability will help our Nation lead the 
inspiring and ambitious effort of sending humans to Mars. 
Further, it will keep the United States and our industry 
partners at the cutting edge of nuclear research, development, 
and applications. I look forward to hearing from our expert 
witnesses this morning on the state of the technology and what 
we need to do to move it forward. I thank you, and yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

    Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Beyer, for holding this 
hearing.
    For decades, the space community has identified nuclear 
propulsion as a required and enabling technology for our human 
exploration goals.Even the best chemical propulsion 
capabilities of today mean long travel times to and from Mars, 
and a long stay on the red planet for our astronaut crew.
    Space nuclear propulsion is a capability that can help 
address the safety of our astronauts by reducing their exposure 
to in-space radiation with shorter trips. Reducing the length 
of time that the first crew stays on Mars would make the 
mission more feasible and likely to succeed.
    We have talked about this technology for a long time. It 
has been the subject of many studies by NASA, the Department of 
Defense, and external advisory committees, including one led by 
retired Air Force Lieutenant General Tom Stafford in 1991.
    I want to know what we need to do to move from studies and 
talk to meaningful progress.
    Whether it's R&D investment, developing safety standards, 
or building a STEM pipeline in nuclear expertise, I hope our 
expert witnesses can identify the necessary actions for 
advancing space nuclear propulsion, and doing so safely.
    This capability will help our nation lead the inspiring and 
ambitious effort of sending humans to Mars. Further, it will 
keep the United States and our industry partners at the cutting 
edge of nuclear research, development, and applications.
    I look forward to hearing from our expert witnesses this 
morning on the state of the technology and what we need to do 
to move it forward.
    Thank you, and I yield back.

    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, very much. I 
now recognize Dr. Lal for your opening statement. Dr. Lal, you 
are muted at the moment.
    Dr. Lal. One second. I saw someone be muted----
    Chairman Beyer. Yes, that--we can hear you now.
    Dr. Lal. OK.

                  TESTIMONY OF DR. BHAVYA LAL,

             SENIOR ADVISOR FOR BUDGET AND FINANCE,

         NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

    Dr. Lal. Good morning. Chairman Beyer, Chairwoman Johnson, 
Ranking Member Babin, and distinguished Members of the 
Subcommittee, it is an honor to again appear before Congress, 
this time on behalf of NASA, to talk about nuclear propulsion. 
Serving under Administrator Nelson and Deputy Administrator 
Melroy at NASA has been a dream come true for me. I hope I can 
convey to the Committee the excitement the whole NASA team 
feels about the future of exploration, a future that assures 
continued American leadership throughout the solar system and 
beyond.
    As you know, on the Artemis Program, NASA is endeavoring to 
return humans to the Moon, but our goals don't stop there. Far 
from it. With the direction from Congress to expand human 
presence into the solar system, our eyes are on Mars, and 
beyond Mars. If we want to explore the cosmos with humans and 
with robots, we need to develop mass efficient high energy 
solutions that can power space vehicles, operate in harsh 
radiation environments, and increase mission flexibility. 
Nuclear fission systems can provide such solutions, delivering 
the high-powered levels needed to conduct exciting activities 
on the surface of the Moon, reduce trip time of crewed missions 
to Mars, and carry large payloads with expanded maneuverability 
for robotic missions into space.
    Dr. Myers has already introduced nuclear electric and 
nuclear thermal propulsion systems. When combined with a 
chemical stage and NEP, nuclear electric propulsion system, can 
provide fast transit to Mars. A shorter trip, as many of you 
have mentioned, would reduce crew exposure both to harmful 
galactic and cosmic radiation, and to a reduced gravity 
environment. NEP reactors can also provide extensibility to 
higher power surface reactors, and are considered the lowest 
mass solution for a fast transit to Mars.
    And NTP, nuclear thermal propulsion system, works 
differently, but can similarly enable a smaller and more 
versatile transport, along with faster trip times. The ability 
of an NTP system to generate high thrust on demand could 
provide greater mission flexibility, including mission abort 
and return to Earth options, if vital crew systems are not 
functioning properly. As with NEP chemical systems, the shorter 
trip enabled by NTP would reduce crew time and reduce gravity 
and space radiation.
    As Dr. Myers said, both [inaudible] nascent, and face steep 
developmental challenges. The National Academies study has 
concluded that the best path forward is to execute early dual 
path technology investments for both NEP and NTP, and to make 
more informed decision in the next few years. To date, NASA has 
prioritized nuclear funding for fission surface power, which is 
a key capability for both lunar and Martian surface mission 
needs. Congress continues to signal to--appropriations that NTP 
is a priority. As such, NASA's development in Fiscal Year 2021 
and prior years has focused on NTP. NASA's Space Technology 
Mission Directorate has been leading both surface power and 
propulsion activities. We are working with DOD and DOE to 
procure low enriched uranium fuels from American industry. We 
recently funded three American companies to develop space-
capable reactor designs. NASA is also sharing its space 
expertise--our space nuclear expertise to support DARPA on 
their NTP flight demonstration, which is planned for the mid-
2020's.
    Nuclear power systems for use on the Moon could be 
developed within the decade. Nuclear propulsion capabilities 
will cost more, and take longer. Indeed, realizing these 
capabilities will require sustained commitment and substantial 
investment over the next 10 to 20 years. It would demand 
working in lockstep with other government agencies, industry, 
and academia to ensure cost sharing and innovative development 
of systems.
    Let me conclude today by reiterating that nuclear power and 
propulsion applications in space are key to enhancing U.S. 
leadership in space. Strategic competitors to the United States 
recognize this edge, and are investing in fission systems 
themselves to fulfill their own ambitions. Development of space 
nuclear systems will also advance the state-of-the-art for 
smaller and safer terrestrial nuclear power plants, helping to 
reduce greenhouse gas emissions. NASA's discovery of--
everything that we do is fueled by persistence to solve hard 
problems worth solving. The decisions we make now will have 
ramifications for centuries. Doing great things when others 
cannot is the definition of what it means to be a leader. No 
one has said it better than President Kennedy, ``We do these 
things not because they are easy, but because they're hard.''
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify. We look forward 
to working together on doing great and hard things, and I look 
forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Lal follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Dr. Lal, very much. It does 
sound like NTP and NEP will be hard. So let's move on to our 
leader from the FFRDC (federally funded research and 
development center), The Aerospace Corporation, Mr. Meholic. 
The floor is yours.

                 TESTIMONY OF MR. GREG MEHOLIC,

        SENIOR PROJECT LEADER, THE AEROSPACE CORPORATION

    Mr. Meholic. Thank you. Chairman Beyer, Ranking Member 
Babin, and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me 
to join this discussion on behalf of The Aerospace Corporation. 
It is my honor and pleasure to testify on this exciting topic 
that has received more interest in the past few years than in 
the last half century. During my 20 years at Aerospace, 
supporting technology programs from the Air Force, Space Force, 
DARPA, NASA, and other agencies, I served as a subject matter 
expert for a project leader evaluating the design development, 
and operation of space launch systems (SLS), as well as for 
advanced emerging propulsion technologies. In my current role I 
am the technical coordinator, excuse me, for most of the 
aerospace activities, supporting cross-agency projects 
associated with fission-based space nuclear propulsion and 
power, or SNPP for short. There are three main points I would 
like to make to the Committee regarding fission-based SNPP.
    My first point is that SNPP could offer enhanced mission 
capabilities. During the Nova Program 50 years ago, nuclear 
thermal propulsion, or NTP, engines demonstrated twice or more 
the cycle efficiency of traditional high thrust chemical rocket 
engines. This means an NTP system can deliver the same amount 
of total propulsive energy, thrust, and acceleration to the 
spacecraft as a chemical system, but with roughly half as much 
onboard propellant. So, for a given total vehicle mass, an NTP 
spacecraft can carry more payload mass than its chemical 
counterpart, or, in other words, more science for less 
propellant. With electrical power, a space nuclear electric 
system would offer long term, continuous, megawatt class 
electrical power that would be insensitive to line of sight or 
distance from the sun. If coupled to an electric propulsion 
system, otherwise known as nuclear electric propulsion, low 
level ultra-efficient thrusts could be produced continuously 
for perhaps months, depending on the mission. In short, SNPP 
could enable military and civil missions or capabilities not 
practically achievable using traditional means, and its 
adoption may therefore bolster U.S. space national security and 
leadership.
    My second point is that SNPP technology maturation would 
benefit from the government-funded--or a government-funded, 
government led collaboration with industry and academia. In 
order to realize the potential benefits of SNPP, there are a 
number of technical, operational, and implementation challenges 
that must be addressed. Uranium fuel form development, 
materials technology, system modeling, tests and integration, 
and a whole host of other aspects are at the hearts of current 
government and industry projects that are closely engaged with 
academic research. But due to the uncertainty of--for SNPP 
customers and missions, these projects are always concerned 
with funding, objectives, personnel, capability, development, 
and a variety of other things. A series of multi-year 
government-funded, government-led efforts built upon SNPP 
maturation plans, and dedicated to addressing these challenges, 
would greatly benefit technology development and risk reduction 
to allow for timely implementation. Potential opportunities 
exist now to mature and advance space nuclear technology, which 
would establish the U.S. as a world leader in such systems.
    My third and final point is that U.S. regulations and 
policies for space nuclear systems should be tailored for SNPP. 
Today policies and regulations for space nuclear material are 
centered around the uses of plutonium and other materials 
inside of radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, 
which have been commonly used for sub-kilowatt levels of power 
for deep space missions. RTGs are always radioactive, and so 
the policies introduce strict compliance guidelines to ensure 
the safety and security of personnel and the environment. 
Fission based SNPP reactors, in contrast, are--emit negligible 
levels of radioactivity until commanded to active in space, 
thus significantly reducing safety concerns.
    50 years of technological advancements in nuclear materials 
and science have further reduced the risk to public safety, and 
are essential to the reactors being envisioned today. 
Therefore, regulations written for RTGs may be unnecessarily 
restrictive for SNPP development, ground test, launch, and in-
space operations. Consideration of fission-based systems into 
policy and regulatory language is where the government could 
have a profound near-term positive influence to inform 
technology maturation, and could help more rapidly establish 
U.S. capability and leadership in this area.
    In closing, space nuclear propulsion and power has advanced 
its viability and credibility well beyond concepts and 
analytical studies to the point of planned test programs, 
ground and/or flight demonstrations, and long-term technology 
maturation efforts. Both government and industry are beginning 
to re-examine potential capabilities of SNPP as feasible 
options for unique science, exploration, and national security 
missions. These heightened interests are supported by a robust 
nuclear industry base, heritage programs, technology 
advancements, and interests of Committees like this that may be 
highly influential toward developing near-term national 
capabilities. My sincerest thanks to this Committee for holding 
this hearing, and for your generous attention. I look forward 
to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Meholic follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Meholic, very much. We'll 
now hear from Mr. French. Mr. French, the floor is yours.

        TESTIMONY OF MR. MICHAEL FRENCH, VICE PRESIDENT,

        SPACE SYSTEMS, AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION

    Mr. French. Thank you, Chairman Beyer. Chairman Beyer, 
Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Babin, and Members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. 
The Aerospace Industries Association represents the largest and 
most diverse coalition of aerospace companies in the United 
States. We represent over 300 companies across the aerospace 
supply chain, from family owned small businesses to large 
system integrators, and from publicly traded, to privately 
held, to venture-funded startup companies. This morning I'll 
focus on three policy areas important to accelerating space 
nuclear propulsion, as Chairwoman Johnson said in her opening 
remarks, how we move from study to action. I'll focus in 
particular on those areas where the Subcommittee is, and 
continue to be, a key enabler.
    I'll begin with recent changes in executive branch policy. 
Nuclear systems have been a part of America's space program 
since the beginning of the space age. The process for improving 
the launch--systems was recently updated to reflect this 
legacy. Under this change, the launch of a nuclear thermal 
propulsion flight demonstration would likely be considered a 
mission under the approval authority of a NASA administrator. 
This would not change the host of safety and regulatory 
requirements for the launch, but would focus and expedite the 
overall process.
    Another recent executive branch policy development was the 
issuance of Space Policy Directive 6, or SPD-6. SPD-6 directs 
the whole of government approach to advanced nuclear space 
systems development, and provides a road map with specific 
agency roles and responsibilities. Maintaining interagency 
coordination, and defined agency milestones, are important to 
policies for accelerating nuclear propulsion development. This 
takes us to the first enabling action. Affirmity--affirming 
these executive branch policy updates is a key action the 
Subcommittee can take as it considers future authorizing 
activities.
    Let me turn next to funding. Stable, sufficient funding is 
critical to accelerating the development of nuclear propulsion 
technology. Here Congress deserves praise. Congress has 
consistently funded the NASA budget on a bipartisan, bicameral 
basis, with eight consistent years of--consecutive years of 
appropriation increases. That number is nine consecutive years 
if you count the pending Fiscal Year 2022 House and Senate 
appropriation marks. Importantly, this support has been 
balanced across the NASA portfolio, supporting aeronautics, 
education, exploration, science, and space technology. Within 
these consistent, balanced appropriations, Congress has funded 
nuclear thermal propulsion on a multi-year basis. Congress's 
funding aligns directly with the timelines established in 
NASA's technology roadmaps.
    Congress has also recognized the importance of a flight 
demonstration to move this capability forward, and has 
consistently included direction for a nuclear thermal 
propulsion flight test along with its funding. The President's 
Budget Request (PBR) has not aligned as directly with the 
technology roadmaps. Finalizing the Fiscal Year 2022 marks and 
test direction, and continued support in Fiscal Year 2023 and 
on, is a second key policy action Congress can take to 
accelerate the development of this technology.
    Finally, and of particular relevance to the Subcommittee, 
is the NASA reauthorization. In the previous Congress this 
Subcommittee passed language directing the NASA administrator 
to ``develop a plan, including a cost estimate, to achieve an 
in-space flight test of a nuclear thermal propulsion system 
within 10 years of the enactment of this act.'' The Senate-
passed NASA authorization included similar direction, with an 
accelerated flight demonstration timeline. Passing a NASA 
reauthorization is the third key policy action Congress can 
take to accelerate the development of this technology. It would 
also provide important direction across the NASA portfolio. The 
Subcommittee should again consider authorizing nuclear thermal 
propulsion activities, establishing a flight demonstration 
date, and endorsing accelerated partnership and coordination 
between NASA, the Department of Energy, the National Security 
Agencies, and industry on nuclear thermal propulsion 
development.
    In sum, Congress and the Subcommittee have been key 
enablers to accelerating the development of this technology, 
and can continue to do so by finalizing Fiscal Year 2022 
funding and direction, providing direction in the NASA 
reauthorization, and continuing its support in Fiscal Year 2023 
and beyond. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and 
I look forward to answering any questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. French follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Beyer. Mr. French, thank you very much. And now, 
finally, we'll hear from Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz. Dr. Chang-
Diaz, the floor is yours.

             TESTIMONY OF DR. FRANKLIN CHANG-DIAZ,

            FOUNDER AND CEO, AD ASTRA ROCKET COMPANY

    Dr. Chang-Diaz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Chairwoman 
Johnson, Ranking Member Babin, and distinguished Members of the 
Subcommittee. I am very honored to be called to testify before 
you on this important topic for our Nation, and for our 
civilization. Space travel beckons humanity even more today 
than it--I think it did in the 1960's, and--not to abandon our 
planet, but to care for it, to preserve it, to protect it, by 
providing an opportunity for all humans to thrive and prosper 
in a universe of possibilities. To do that, we must secure a 
safe, and robust, and a fast means of transportation, and 
nuclear power offers us that opportunity, but there is homework 
to be done.
    In rocket propulsion, the faster the rocket exhaust is, the 
better the rocket. To make the exhaust fast, we have to make it 
hot. The best chemical rocket runs at thousands of degrees, and 
has an exhaust velocity of about 4,500 meters per second. 
Nuclear rockets come in two flavors, nuclear thermal and 
nuclear electric. The goal is the same for both, to heat the 
propellant to high temperature and expel it. In nuclear 
thermal, the reactor is a contact heater to heat hydrogen and 
expel it. In nuclear thermal rockets, you could increase the 
exhaust velocity to about 9,000 meters per second, but higher 
temperatures are constrained by materials limitations.
    In a nuclear electric rocket, temperatures of millions of 
degrees are accessible because at those temperatures the 
exhaust is an electrically conducting plasma, a soup of charged 
particles which responds well to electric and magnetic fields. 
In the VASIMR engine, for example, we take advantage of that 
feature by using a magnetic field to hold and guide the plasma, 
keeping it away from any material surface as we heat it. The 
heating is done with electromagnetic waves, so nothing physical 
touches the plasma. In these devices, exhaust velocities of 
30,000 to 50,000 meters per second are measured, an order of 
magnitude greater than chemical rockets, and higher velocities 
are technologically feasible.
    The nuclear reactor here is not a heater, but is an 
electrical power plant, and the big challenge is to develop 
powerful, compact, and efficient nuclear electric power source, 
and an electric rocket capable of handling all that power. This 
is the homework. We must do it if we want to lead. The 
potential payoff is extraordinary. For example, with a power 
and propulsion package weighing about three to four kilograms 
per kilowatt, and operating about 20 to 30 megawatts, human 
Mars transits of less than 3 months would be possible. Nuclear 
electric also extends the departure and return windows from 
Mars from days to weeks, and provides a variety of in-flight 
abort options if they were needed.
    So in space, power is life, and with nuclear electric, the 
reactor also provides an abundant supply of electrical power 
for the ship. The Nation has made investments in nuclear 
thermal. We need to invigorate the nuclear electric option as 
well. It is the right time. Our own VASIMR engine recently 
achieved a major milestone with an 88-hour high power 
continuous endurance test last July, a project supported by 
private investors and NASA. Other high-powered technologies are 
also poised for development. It is also the right time, as 
nuclear electric draws on advances in fusion energy innovation, 
now also with private sector investment, and advances in power 
electronics for electric vehicles. To lead in space propulsion, 
we must invest in disruptive innovation.
    Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, as our Nation 
moves to explore deep space with humans, we must be able to 
travel fast, to reduce the debilitating effects of space on the 
human body, the reduce the burden of consumables, life support, 
to be less constrained by the planetary alignments and tight 
launch windows, and to expand our capability to recover from 
unforeseen contingencies en route. In short, this is the 
problem punch list we need to solve to give our astronauts a 
fighting chance in deep space. The development of high powered 
nuclear electric propulsion is critical to checking those 
boxes, and to meeting our Nation's goal in space. Thank you, 
and I'm happy to take your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Chang-Diaz follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Dr. Chang-Diaz. That concludes 
our presentations from our five expert witnesses. We'll begin 
the round of questions. I get to go first, by virtue of the 
history right now.
    So, Dr. Chang-Diaz, this VASIMR engine that you worked on--
you say you have a Ph.D. in plasma physics----
    Dr. Chang-Diaz. That's correct.
    Chairman Beyer [continuing]. And it seems like you're using 
tokamak-type ideas, electromagnetic fields to hold the high 
plasma in, very parallel to what they're doing in the fusion 
research here on Earth.
    Dr. Chang-Diaz. Right.
    Chairman Beyer. When you talk about 30,000 to 50,000 meters 
per second, is--obviously much faster than the 9,000 meters per 
second that NED--NTP would give you, but is that still fast 
enough to get there in a reasonable amount of time?
    Dr. Chang-Diaz. It is if you run the engine long enough. 
These electric rockets are low thrust, but continuous thrust, 
so you are accelerating all the time. And so what you end up 
doing is you go halfway to Mars, and then you start turning 
around and decelerating so that you don't, you know, overshoot 
the planet. But yes, in the end, you go faster than with a 
nuclear thermal, or even a chemical rocket.
    Chairman Beyer. OK. Thank you. Mr. French, one of the most 
obvious questions is, if we can't get to Mars using the 
traditional chemical stuff, and we have to turn to some type of 
nuclear propulsion, why the zero request in the President's 
budget for this? And why so little--if we look at your chart 
about FY '17, '18, '19, '20, no specific funding at all, 100 
million in 2021, and then zero in 2022. What's been missing 
from NASA's request to the President's request?
    Dr. Lal. I could jump in with that, Mike, if you'd like? 
So----
    Chairman Beyer. Or both, please.
    Dr. Lal. Yes.
    Mr. French. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And so I'll--you know, 
I'll--I can't speak to what--you know, what happened within 
NASA in Fiscal Year 2022. I will say, from my experience both 
at the White House and NASA in prior administrations, what I 
often encountered is that NASA would have important technology 
needs, and develop technology roadmaps, and sometimes the 
budget for those requests didn't quite make it through the full 
budget process at the end of the day. And so--sometimes you 
could find something where a technology need may not 
necessarily, at the end of the day, be reflected in the final 
PBR. That's in general. You know, I'd really have to turn to 
NASA to explain what occurred, you know, in Fiscal Year 2022. 
But I'll certainly say, can't understate the--what the Congress 
has done so consistently here, with its support in recognizing 
the need of this technology.
    Chairman Beyer. Hooray for Congress, but Dr. Lal, where is 
NASA on this?
    Dr. Lal. So--thanks, Mike. So nuclear propulsion, as we 
just discussed, is critical to America's future in space, 
there's no doubt, however, with the limited resources available 
to NASA for tech development efforts, our priority has been to 
focus on surface power, fission surface power, first, which is 
not only a near-term requirement for long duration surface 
mission on the Moon, but has extensibility to nuclear electric 
propulsion. That's an important thing to point out.
    The Fiscal Year 2022 budget does include many technologies 
that apply to propulsion systems. One of the most important 
ones is cryogenic fluid management systems, which are critical 
for propulsion, for long term storage of hydrogen and other 
volatiles in space, and--not just for in space, but also on the 
surface of Moon, Mars, and other bodies, we are also continuing 
work, in terms of the budget, on space-related power conversion 
systems, LEU, low enriched uranium, moderator materials, and 
lighter weight radiation shielding, all of which apply to 
propulsion. NASA, of course, looks forward to working with 
Congress and the administration to develop a balanced, schedule 
driven investment strategy for our nuclear portfolio.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Dr. Lal. Mr. Meholic, you really 
talked very much about tailoring regulations to the SNPP, and 
you compared it to the RTGs, the plutonium radioactive--is this 
parallel to the efforts on Earth to distinguish fusion energy 
from fission energy? You know, having--given the fundamental 
difference that these are very different power systems, with 
very different dangers and advantages?
    Mr. Meholic. Yes, absolutely. You know, the RTGs, as I 
mentioned, are always on, as far as--you know, even from their 
manufacture, they have to be carefully handled in proper 
facilities and so forth. And even during launch, you know, the 
RTG device is actually one of the last things to be loaded onto 
the launch vehicle before, you know, all personnel leave the 
pad. With a nuclear fission system, though, that is not the 
case, right? These are basically just giant hunks of metal with 
some uranium in it, for all practical purposes, and, you know, 
it is not critical in any way, shape, form, or manner. It can 
be handled safely, and so forth.
    What I meant by the policies, to kind of touch on that a 
little bit more, is there is, you know, the Presidential 
Memorandum Number 20, that talks about launch approval for 
these types of reactors, but there's also other policies 
associated with DOE and DOD on perhaps the testing of these 
types of things. A number of the folks here in the testimony 
mentioned about ground test, the need for ground test, the 
value of ground test, but, you know, there are really no 
current regulations that would allow that in such a way that 
would not be prohibitive, or take years to try to overcome from 
environmental studies and things like that.
    So the point I was trying to make on that was to be able to 
streamline that process and look at--really look at the safety 
aspects of these new types of reactors, as opposed to 50 years 
ago, and determine if the policies and regulations in place 
that would cover ground test and operation may have to be 
tailored in some way. And granted, you know, RTGs and that type 
of testing is a different realm as if we were to try to test a 
nuclear thermal propulsion system in the open aid like they did 
for NOVA--NERVA. So, you know, NASA right now has a dedicated 
task to look at, ground test options, facilities, and so forth 
for one of their space nuclear propulsion projects, nuclear 
thermal propulsion centric right now, and, you know, those 
types of policies need to be looked at a little bit deeper.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you very----
    Mr. Meholic. Thank you very much for the question, sir.
    Chairman Beyer. Yes, yes. Thank you, Mr. Meholic. And let 
me now recognize the Ranking Member of our Space Subcommittee, 
Dr. Babin of Texas.
    Mr. Babin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. Dr. 
Lal, in May China became the only non-U.S. country to 
successfully deploy a rover on the surface of Mars, and shortly 
afterwards China announced that it intends to conduct crewed 
missions to Mars in 2033. The head of the China Academy of 
Launch Vehicle Technology indicated at the time that to shorten 
the travel time, spacecraft would have to tap energy released 
from nuclear reactions in the form of heat and electricity in 
addition to traditional chemical propellants. What insight do 
we have--and please keep this as short and abbreviated as you 
possibly can. What insight do we have into China's current 
capabilities regarding space nuclear propulsion? How much are 
they spending, are their schedules realistic? Are they focusing 
on NEP or NTP? And if they're focused on both, what technology 
is farther along, and could they develop and deploy space 
nuclear propulsion before we do?
    Dr. Lal. Thank you, Ranking Member Babin. Our strategic 
competitors, including China, are indeed aggressively investing 
in a wide range of space technologies, including nuclear power 
and propulsion, to fulfill their ambitions for a sustained 
human lunar presence, as well as Martian and deep space science 
missions. So there is no question that there is investment at 
the level that we do not understand. Data is hard to come by, 
and I can take some of your specific questions for the record 
and come back to you. On space nuclear, we have seen long term 
planning on part of China for human missions using nuclear 
systems in the late 2030's, similar to our plans. The United 
States needs to move at a fast pace to stay competitive and to 
remain a leader in the global space community.
    Chairman Beyer. Brian, you're----
    Mr. Perlmutter. Brian, you muted yourself.
    Chairman Beyer. Yes.
    Mr. Babin. There we go. Thank you. I'm sorry. 
Extensibility--this is for Dr. Lal as well. Extensibility is 
the concept that technologies developed in the near term will 
be useful for the future exploration as well. Extensibility 
prevents the development of dead-end capabilities. Nuclear 
surface power will be required for crewed operations and 
missions on the Moon. Surface power generation would presumably 
be extensible to nuclear electric propulsion development for a 
mission to Mars as well. NTP is already being developed by the 
Department of Defense to meet their needs, and Congress has 
appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars for NTP over 
several years. Referring to a mission to Mars, the Academy 
report stated, ``If NASA plans to apply nuclear electric 
propulsion, or NEP, technology to a 2039 launch of the baseline 
mission, NASA should immediately accelerate NEP technology 
development.'' How is NASA supporting the development of NEP? 
Which is critical, in my opinion.
    Dr. Lal. So we are--as per congressional direction, we are 
focusing our effort on NTP. However, as you noted, NEP is a 
critical--we must achieve. Our investment in surface power is--
does have extensibility to NEP, although I should point out 
that, depending on the wattage of the surface power, that NEP 
may be more applicable for deep space science missions, which 
are extremely important for us, and over time they can go up to 
the power level that would be required for an NEP human 
mission. So, you know, we are looking at about, you know, 10 
kilowatts to 40 kilowatt-like systems for surface power for the 
moment. We need to be looking at higher levels. For a human 
mission to Mars, we should be looking at--that NEP system is 
more like two megawatts, so there's a lot of extensibility that 
needs to happen from surface power to NEP.
    Mr. Babin. Got you. OK. Well, thank you so much. And real 
quickly, Dr. Myers, there have been exceptional advancements in 
high power electrical propulsion, or EP, accelerated by recent 
investment from the private sector, such as in the NASA next 
step public/private partnerships that led to the recent 88 hour 
endurance test of a VASIMR test engine by a constituent of 
mine. Additionally--who we are hearing from today. 
Additionally, electric propulsion innovation benefits from 
fusion energy development now also accelerating with private 
investment, and the great advancements in power electronics for 
transportation and industry electrification, yet high power 
electric propulsion development has suffered from low and 
intermittent investment over many decades.
    The National Academy of Sciences panel recommended that the 
U.S. must accelerate a robust and sustained program to develop 
high power electric propulsion thrusters needed to maintain and 
advance our leadership in space propulsion. How should NASA 
prioritize investments in both incremental innovations, such as 
the Hall-Effect Thruster, and disruptive innovations, such as 
the VASIMR engine?
    Dr. Myers. I think at this point--thank you for the 
question, and----
    Mr. Babin. Yes, sir.
    Dr. Myers [continuing]. At this point our committee 
recommended a balanced approach, focused on leveraging the 
capabilities of well-established technologies, while at the 
same time maintaining a portion of the investment in the 
breakthrough technologies. Having a balanced portfolio of 
technology investments is the best way to mitigate program 
risk, and, at the same time, you really want to leverage--we 
found that you really want to leverage the capabilities--the 
established capabilities, and, frankly, the engineering know-
how, and the deep understanding, on the Hall thrusters and the 
MPD thrusters.
    For example, the lithium MPD thruster has actually fired 
for 500 hours at 500 kilowatts. So that's--you know, we commend 
the progress. We were excited to read about the progress that 
VASIMR had made--had demonstrated, that Franklin and his team 
have demonstrated. Excellent progress, and we certainly should 
continue. At this point, we do not have enough data to make a 
good decision between the different technologies for this very 
high power--nobody has invested much money in the very high-
power systems, and we need a more sustained investment in those 
very high-power systems.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Dr. Myers, and thank you, Dr. 
Babin.
    Mr. Babin. OK. Thank you very much. I wanted--I had another 
question, but I see that we're out of time, Mr. Chairman. Thank 
you.
    Chairman Beyer. Great. Thank you----
    Mr. Meholic. Dr. Babin? Dr. Babin? May I interject for a 
second, sir?
    Mr. Babin. Sure.
    Mr. Meholic. Building off of Dr. Myers's comments, and 
thank you for allowing this, you know, I agree with his points 
100 percent. I read the National Academies report, and they 
identified also, as is well known the number of critical 
subsystems associated with nuclear electric power, right? A--
the electric power thruster, as was pointed out, is a 
technology that's decades old, all right?
    There's advancements that may need to accommodate these--
you know, to accommodate these types of Mars missions, but 
these other subsystems, like the power generation system, the 
actual reactor, the cooling, and the heat rejection, and all 
the other subsystems are absolutely critical in order to 
provide the power to those electric thrusters. And those 
actually just come into--as--what I described in my testimony 
as just the space nuclear power part. Those also need dedicated 
development programs that have yet to be realized in any great 
form, especially for the power and the durations expected for 
these high--these highly----
    Chairman Beyer. OK, let's----
    Mr. Meholic. Thank you.
    Chairman Beyer. Let's move on, because we have lots of 
people in the queue.
    Mr. Babin. All right. I really wanted to hear what Dr. 
Chang-Diaz had to say about it, but----
    Chairman Beyer. Well, he--and, Brian, hang in, we can do a 
second round too.
    Mr. Babin. OK. All right, thanks.
    Chairman Beyer. But now let me recognize the Chair of the 
Full Committee, Congresswoman Johnson.
    Chairwoman Johnson. Well, thank you very much. Dr. Myers, 
in the National Academies report your panel found that NASA 
needs to accelerate its development programs in nuclear 
propulsion, whether nuclear thermal or nuclear electric, in 
order to meet the requirements for a Mars mission in the 
2030's. Is achieving this capability primarily a question of 
adequate resources, or are there other factors?
    Dr. Myers. I would say that the--thank you for the 
question, and I would say that the primary factor is adequate 
resources. As was noted, there has been some significant 
investment over the past 8 years in nuclear thermal propulsion, 
but there has not been a commensurate investment in nuclear 
electric propulsion, and so we found that we do not have the 
information that--the data which are needed in order to make 
informed decisions about all of those subsystems that Mr. 
Meholic just mentioned, for example.
    There are, however, some very fundamental questions about 
both nuclear thermal and nuclear electric. The risk associated 
with achieving the temperatures and lifetimes in the reactor 
fuels for nuclear thermal is a fundamental materials challenge 
that we think is quite likely solvable, which is why we came to 
the conclusion that it was possible to meet the timeframe for 
the baseline mission, but we're not 100 percent sure. There's 
real technical risk there, and some fundamental materials work 
that needs to happen on the reactor fuels for nuclear thermal.
    Nuclear electric is more of a scaling question. They--it 
does not have exactly the same kind--it has very different 
challenges, in fact, and so it's--I would say it's primarily a 
resource question, but there are some fundamental materials--
some fundamental science questions that need to be addressed 
immediately, as we say in the report, in order to really get to 
the point where we can be sure.
    Chairwoman Johnson. Well, thank you. Now, the National 
Academies report, that you co-chaired, of course, noted 
challenges in the STEM education and work force pipeline----
    Dr. Myers. Um-hum.
    Chairwoman Johnson [continuing]. For advancing space 
nuclear propulsion. The report identified three key challenges, 
a lack of gender and ethnic diversity, competition for talent, 
and export control and classification regulations. How do these 
challenges affect the space nuclear propulsion sector, and what 
needs to happen to address these challenges?
    Dr. Myers. Thank you for--that's an excellent question, and 
it's one of very--it's very relevant in today's society. I 
would say that the resources need to be put on these 
technologies in order to attract the students and set up the 
pipeline that is needed for--to get the students and--the 
students excited and interested, and we need the programs at 
the universities, and then we need the programs even further 
down to get people excited about all the different aspects of 
space exploration and space nuclear propulsion. We've got to 
fill that pipeline with smart kids who are excited, and a 
diverse population of kids, and we can't do that without 
resources. So we really need a balanced portfolio of work to 
support a broad engagement of students across the Nation. I 
hope that answered your question. I--missed part of it.
    Chairwoman Johnson. Yes, it's a challenge. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Madam Chair, very much. Now 
recognize the Congressman from Cape Canaveral, Mr. Posey.
    Mr. Posey. Thank you, Chairman Beyer, for holding this 
hearing on space nuclear propulsion for enabling deep space 
exploration. Mr. French, in your written testimony you 
mentioned policy improvements have already taken place for 
launching nuclear payloads with the National Security 
Presidential Memorandum 20 in 2019. Why was the National 
Security Presidential Memorandum 20 so important?
    Mr. French. Thank you, sir. What it did is it looked--the--
it updated a policy that had essentially been unchanged since 
the late 1970's, and in that time we've certainly had quite a 
bit of experience launching nuclear space systems. What it does 
is--it's very important--it doesn't change the overall safety 
and regulatory requirements that would have to take place to 
approve a launch, but what it does is it shifts the final 
approval for certain launches, including likely what would be a 
nuclear thermal propulsion launch, from being led by a 
Presidential approval to one by the NASA Administrator. Now, 
again, it doesn't change the safety and overall regulatory 
requirements, but what that would do is if--in a NASA mission, 
it would allow more focus in driving the process, and ensuring 
that all the gates were met in a timely fashion. And so that's 
the primary positive thing there.
    Dr. Lal. Could I add to that response?
    Mr. Posey. Sure, sure.
    Dr. Lal. I would just like to add to that that everything 
Mike said was absolutely accurate, but I think one big 
innovation in the Presidential Memorandum was that the analyses 
are based on the characteristics of the system, the levels of 
the potential hazard, and national security considerations, and 
all of those are made quantitative. So the process that existed 
before since the 1970's was very open to interpretation, and a 
lot of discussion, and it was just very expensive, because 
there was no sort of level of safety to which you were trying 
to aim for. With this update, there are quantified risks that 
we aim to address, and that's a good thing all around. That 
makes safety better, it makes costs lower, and it increases the 
speed at which we can achieve our objectives.
    Mr. Posey. Thank you. Mr. French, how would that policy 
change be an important enabler for thermal propulsion systems 
that would be needed for deep space?
    Mr. French. Yes, sir. So, under the--as Dr. Lal talked 
about, there's three differed tiers under the new policy, and 
as the policy is designed, a flight demonstration of nuclear 
thermal propulsion system would fall likely under tier two, 
which would gain the benefits that Dr. Lal just discussed.
    Mr. Posey. OK. And is there anything Congress could do to 
expand upon the memorandum to keep America a preeminent leader?
    Mr. French. Yes, sir. I'd say that, on the policy side, 
affirming these positive improvements through authorization 
activity would be very important, as well as, you know, 
affirming the nuclear--the language that the Committee--
Subcommittee considered last Congress would be a very positive 
step.
    Mr. Posey. Thank you. Mr. Meholic, whenever a launch 
includes a payload with a nuclear reactor, there's a huge 
process to safeguard threats to life and the environment. In 
your written testimony you stated fission-based SNPP, space 
nuclear power and propulsion, systems are manufactured and 
launched in the off state, that would dramatically reduce any 
threats to the environment or life. Can you give us an example 
of how that might protect lives, let's say, on the Space Coast, 
for example?
    Mr. Meholic. Sure. Thank you for the question. Yes, so, as 
I mentioned in the--in my earlier words here, you know, RTGs 
are always hot, given the nature of plutonium, right? It's 
always radiating, there always has to be shielding and so 
forth, and if there was a launch accident, you know, those--
that material inside of that reactor would still remain in that 
active state, and, you know, would fall down into the oceans, 
and in the--into the--onto the land, depending on where the 
accident occurs, and potentially have to get, you know, 
analyzed and assessed for what kind of damage would be 
produced.
    With a uranium-based nuclear fission system, the uranium is 
actually not fissioning. It is very, very negligibly 
radioactive at the time during manufacture, during the fuel 
formation, during its insertion into the reactor, and basically 
is a giant chunk of metal that weighs several tons, not unlike 
a normal spacecraft. So, you know, if an accident were to 
occur, this metal would come down, you know, possibly as a 
single piece, but unless there is some form, or command, or 
significant consequence that would cause it to go critical, it 
would otherwise remain as a giant chunk of metal, and just 
splash down into the ocean with no results. But, obviously, the 
analysis would have to be done for--you know, the criticality 
analysis, and everything that accompanies any kind of a normal 
launch when you're dealing with this type of thing. So that 
would still continue.
    Mr. Posey. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Posey, very much. Now 
recognize the Congressman from Mars, Mr. Perlmutter.
    Mr. Perlmutter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. 
Just a couple thoughts. The good news and bad news for us in 
Congress is we have one of the top nuclear physicists in the 
country on this panel, Dr. Bill Foster. So the good news is he 
can interpret all of the things you all are talking about, 
nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion, and plasma containment, 
and all that stuff. Bad news is we have to listen to that all 
the time too. So what I want to talk about is--every one of you 
has addressed the need for stable and sufficient resources, and 
that's really what Congress must and can--that's our 
responsibility, as the board of directors here, sending out a 
mission.
    So let me begin with--just assume that, between the Defense 
Department, the intelligence agencies, the Department of 
Energy, and NASA, the budget is sufficient, and you know where 
I'm going with this, to get our astronauts to Mars by 2033. Dr. 
Myers, your report is pretty sobering, quite frankly, for an 
exuberant guy like me, and maybe I'm being unrealistic, but are 
there any fundamental scientific limitations to us being able 
to get to Mars by 2033, if you had sufficient resources? I 
mean, does it just take that much time to do the kinds of 
research and testing that's necessary?
    Dr. Myers. Yes, unfortunately, it likely does. There are 
some--as I mentioned earlier, the materials challenges for 
nuclear thermal propulsion may really limit its capabilities, 
but when you look at the overall mission architecture, and the 
propellant that--the launches that you need, the--you know, the 
cargo--the precursor cargo missions, the--just the normal Mars 
orbital dynamics, right, the sonotic cycle, when you look at 
all of that, and you ask about the technology development 
requirements from a--you--from where we are today to launching 
a crewed mission, we saw that as a tremendous challenge, and 
possibly--likely unobtainable by 2033.
    Mr. Perlmutter. All right. So----
    Dr. Myers. Of course----
    Mr. Perlmutter [continuing]. I guess--I'm the kind of guy 
that thinks that, between the scientific community, the 
engineering community, the technical community, we can do that. 
I know you guys can do it. And the reason that we said 2033, or 
that's become so--I've become so obsessed with it is 4 years 
ago, or 5 years ago, we had a couple senior people from NASA, I 
think it was probably 2016, 2017, saying 2033 the orbital 
mechanics is good. That gives us a 15-year lead time, and, yes, 
we can do it. So, Dr. Lal, can we do it?
    Dr. Lal. So I agree with everything Dr. Myers said, but I 
would like to add some other things to it. So deep space 
transport is just one piece of getting to Mars. There's also 
the entry, descent, and landing, which is very, very difficult, 
and we have not invested much in it at all. We've landed small 
rovers and landers, which is not at all like human landers, 
right? So that's a second piece. The third piece is 
environmental control. I mean, we have to take these--you know, 
our best humans, you know, the best Americans, our heroes, you 
know, in these vessels, and we need to make sure that the 
environmental control and life support systems can keep them 
alive for 2 to 3 years. I mean, nuclear cuts the travel time by 
maybe a year, but it's still about 2 years.
    And the last but least--not least piece is radiation 
protection. So, you know, there's huge amounts of galactic and 
cosmic radiation the astronauts would be exposed to, and we 
need to understand the impact of the radiation on the human 
body, so transportation is just one element. There's all these 
other elements as well, and funding everything together, while 
we are also interested in----
    Mr. Perlmutter. I--OK. I know it's going to be a challenge. 
I've been listening to this for 5 years, and I know you people 
can do it, so I'm going to turn to Mr. Meholic right now, and I 
wanted to give Dr. Chang-Diaz a chance too, as--and I wanted to 
talk about SPD-6, but--Mr. Meholic?
    Mr. Meholic. Yes, I also wanted to--thank you very much for 
the question. As far as resources go, there's also the 
resources of launch acquisition and launch vehicles to get to 
orbit to put these types of things together. One area that's 
not touched on very much is the advancements that are needed in 
on-orbit and automated assembly in space of these types of 
large spacecraft, regardless of what the propulsion system is, 
and how to launch those systems, and the availability of those 
systems, and qualification of those systems, by the timeframe 
you're talking about, sir. That's all. Thank you.
    Dr. Myers. So I--conclude and wrap that up by saying, when 
the committee looked at all of those issues that Dr. Lal and 
Mr. Meholic mentioned, that's why we came to the conclusion 
that we did.
    Mr. Perlmutter. All right. Well, I'm going to keep--I'm 
going to push you, because I know you can do----
    Dr. Myers. Excellent. We look forward to having the 
resources to do our best.
    Chairman Beyer. And, Congressman Perlmutter, unless the 
Committee overrules me, we're going to try to do a second round 
too, so hang in there. Now let me recognize the original Daniel 
Webster from Florida. Congressman Webster, the floor is yours.
    Mr. Webster. Thank you for putting this on, Chairman, and--
really appreciate it. This is technologically challenging for 
all of us, I guess. Especially me. I was wondering, is there 
a--any thought to where the launch point should be? Should it 
be on the Earth, or should it be external to the Earth? And I'm 
not sure who would be the right person to answer that question.
    Dr. Myers. I'm happy to jump in----
    Mr. Webster. OK. Mr. Myers?
    Dr. Myers [continuing]. And then I'm sure other--others of 
our witnesses have useful--have good things to say. I would say 
that the bottom line is that, right now, everything starts on 
the surface of the Earth, so we have to get to space. The 
departure--and then, actually, as Mr. Meholic mentioned 
earlier, there's an assembly point in Earth orbit where you 
bring all of those resources together, and then the mission to 
Mars will depart from Earth orbit. So there's--you launch from 
Earth into orbit, do a vehicle assembly process in orbit, and 
then go to----
    Mr. Webster. And the initial launch is a whole bunch of 
stuff with them? It's--you're only taking people, and parts, 
and all kinds of other things, and then it's assembled in 
space?
    Dr. Myers. Yes. Yes, it's assembled in orbit, in space, and 
then it goes to Mars from that point.
    Mr. Webster. Is there a--is it a deep orbit, or a shallow 
orbit, or----
    Dr. Myers. Frankly, that's been--that has not been 
finalized yet. There are--we, in fact, looked at two options. 
One--and we had presentations--we had lots of people providing 
us input, but there are options to do a low Earth orbit 
assembly, and for a high Earth orbit assembly, or, frankly, 
even assemble around the Moon. There--NASA has done some 
mission architectures using lunar orbit as an assembly stage 
point.
    So we've looked at all of those, or the community has 
looked at all of those options, and one of the findings of our 
Committee was that we really need an apples to apples 
comparison of these different mission--what we call mission 
architecture options, different ways of performing these 
missions, in order----
    Mr. Webster. So does that----
    Dr. Myers [continuing]. To finalize one.
    Mr. Webster. So does that affect the timing, you know, 
talking about particular years orbiting that, or whatever? Is 
there a--does that change the timing, or the--of the actual 
distance after you get into space? Is it----
    Dr. Myers. It does----
    Mr. Webster [continuing]. Really matter?
    Dr. Myers. It can change the amount of time that the 
astronauts are in space, but it doesn't change it dramatically, 
because the Moon is bound to the Earth, and so fundamentally 
the orbits are guided by the Earth's orbit and Mars's orbit, 
for example. So it can affect it somewhat, but it does not 
affect it fundamentally.
    Mr. Webster. Is that--is there any change--well, you're--if 
you're doing it in space, does that change the type of energy 
used to propel the ship to Mars?
    Dr. Myers. Not--no, it doesn't, because, again, 
fundamentally you have to go from an Earth orbit, whether it--
wherever you assemble in Earth orbit, be it--even at lunar 
orbit--the Moon orbits around the Earth, and so fundamentally 
it does not. It can have effects on--it can have--it definitely 
does impact it some, but not dramatically. And other panelists, 
feel free to jump----
    Dr. Lal. Yes, I guess I would just add to that, if I might, 
you know, the space station, low Earth orbit, is about 400 
kilometers, Moon is 400,000 kilometers, Mars is 400 million 
kilometers, so being, you know, in Earth orbit versus Moon 
orbit really doesn't change a whole lot as--and it's about the 
same time regardless of where the assembly happens.
    Mr. Webster. Thank you both.
    Mr. Meholic. And if I may also, sir, you know, the assembly 
of these types of spacecraft, regardless of what the propulsion 
is, if it's nuclear electric or nuclear thermal, is going to 
require perhaps dozens of launches, depending on the launch 
vehicle, and how much each one of those rockets can carry to 
the assembly orbit, right? The further out you go away from 
Earth to assemble, the larger the launch vehicle you're going 
to need, depending on the mass that you're sending up, you 
know, which could be several tons, right, of payload. So being 
able to do that, acquire the launch vehicles, get all the 
launch approvals, you know, and send these things to the right 
orbits is critical. And I know that time is coming up.
    Mr. Webster. Is there any way to start now doing that?
    Dr. Myers. We really need the--to make some other decisions 
about technology approach. I think we need to make some 
fundamental progress on the technologies before we start the 
mission itself. So we do need to establish the infrastructure 
required to--you know, it--at the technology level, and then 
the ground infrastructure, and the in-space infrastructure 
before we can really start the mission, I would say.
    Mr. Webster. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Chairman Beyer. It's now my honor to recognize Dr. Foster, 
who, with Mr. Perlmutter and others, I thoroughly enjoy trying 
to keep up with the many different ideas that he has. Dr. 
Foster, floor is yours.
    Mr. Foster. OK. Well--all right. Am I audible here?
    Chairman Beyer. Yes.
    Mr. Foster. OK. The--well, actually, just a follow up on 
the--just--the previous question, at what point, when you look 
at different assembly scenarios farther from Earth, at what 
point does the radiation burden on whatever humans are 
assembling stuff become a driving factor? You know, is that a--
turning to be a problem for, for example, lunar assembly?
    Dr. Myers. The assembly would probably be primarily 
automated, as in--we talk about autonomous rendezvous and 
docking, for example, and autonomous assembly. It would need to 
be added to the in-space time of the astronauts, but those 
astronauts doing the assembly would probably not be the ones 
actually going on to Mars.
    Mr. Foster. OK.
    Dr. Myers. So there probably--you know, in that scenario, 
there would probably be a way to balance all of that, and to 
end up, again, minimizing the radiation exposure of the----
    Mr. Foster. Well, the worst case, for the ones that 
actually make the trip----
    Dr. Myers. Exactly.
    Mr. Foster [continuing]. You're telling me. Yes.
    Mr. Meholic. And----
    Mr. Foster. Let's see. What is the best understanding of 
the performance hit that you take in the--low enriched versus 
high enriched uranium? You know, both for nuclear thermal and 
for, you know, surface-based power reactors? You know----
    Dr. Myers. I can----
    Mr. Meholic. I can----
    Dr. Myers. I'll go first, and then Greg. So it turns out 
that at these power levels, and at these--either nuclear 
thermal or nuclear electric, there really isn't a significant 
power hit for highly enriched--I'm sorry, for HALEU, for low 
enriched uranium. The--you can design the reactor to operate 
just as well with HALEU or HEU. It is a different reactor 
design, you have to design it differently, but there is 
essentially no----
    Mr. Foster. So you're limited by thermal transfer from 
whatever fuel assemblies you have, and it's--doesn't matter 
what's inside, pretty much?
    Dr. Myers. Pretty much.
    Mr. Foster. And is there a different----
    Dr. Myers. At this scale. That's--I'm sorry. Let me just 
finish by saying that at small scales, so for some of these--
the systems that Dr. Lal was talking about, for near term--near 
term surface fission power, the--there is much more of a 
penalty, so at 10 kilowatts there is a significant----
    Mr. Foster. Right.
    Dr. Myers [continuing]. Penalty between the two--you can 
still build a HALEU reactor, it'll still work fine. It'll just 
be heavier than you want. But as you scale up in power, that 
penalty is dramatically reduced.
    Mr. Foster. All right. And so the other effect that may be 
hard to quantify is the effect on mission cost, just because of 
the tremendous security. I'm sure most of you have been in a 
place that handles high enriched uranium. It's my understanding 
that the commercial enterprise interested in this are pretty 
much uninterested in high enriched uranium, is that----
    Dr. Myers. That is certainly what our committee--our 
committee was explicitly told that if industry is going to do 
it, it must be HALEU. It must be the----
    Mr. Foster. OK.
    Dr. Myers [continuing]. High-assay low-enriched uranium, 
not HEU. HEU is a killer for----
    Mr. Foster. Yes.
    Mr. Meholic. And if I may, that leads directly into, sir, 
the non-proliferation policies that the United States has 
with--you know, internationally, is the use of HEU. And also to 
touch back on Mr. Myers's points, and--as correctly described, 
you know, the performance hit is minimal with--between HALEU 
and HEU, but there is a mass change, right? You know, there 
have been a number of studies that showed that if you use a 
HALEU type of reactor for the power levels and thrust that are 
described in space nuclear propulsion and power, the core in 
the actual--the actual reactor core may only be about 15 to 25 
percent heavier for a HALEU system than for an HEU system. What 
that means to the overall spacecraft mass when you're talking 
100 metric tons is very, very little, right, is the change in 
weight there. So the performance of the engines, as Dr. Myers 
stated, is going to be about the same regardless of the core.
    Mr. Foster. All right. And so the mission impact, combined 
with the cost impact, and the fact that you basically have to 
go to weapons labs to--you know, to do an HEU design, and to 
test it, and everything else? Some--OK. That's interesting.
    Dr. Lal. Could I add one more----
    Mr. Foster. You know, the one corner that still made sense 
was the short-term low power surface reactors, which was--that 
was a prototype that was tested a few years back. And what's 
the status of that, and is there--are the--you know, what 
direction are we going in there?
    Dr. Lal. So if I could take that question? So I just wanted 
to add one--another point to what Dr. Myers and Dr. Meholic 
said. Every single reactor effort we have had in this country 
in the last, you know, 50, 60, 70 years has been an HEU effort, 
so as we switch to HALEU, which we are--which we have, we 
really cannot leverage a lot of those lessons. So we cannot 
say, you know, doing ``X'' would be easier because we did that 
in the 1950's, because what we did in the 1950's was the system 
that's not really transferable. So I just wanted to make that 
point.
    But to your question on the status of kilopower, it was a 
zero-power criticality test. It went very well, and since then 
NASA has determined, and I can get you details by e-mail--has 
determined to move from the HEU to a HALEU system, and those 
designs are underway. And NASA's currently looking at releasing 
an RFP (request for proposals) solicitation for reactor--power 
reactor systems this--the end of this year, and it would be 
asking for a HALEU design for surface power on the Moon.
    Mr. Foster. Thank you. Sorry, my time is up, but it looks 
like there's no reason to reconsider and look back on that 
decision at this point. Good. OK. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Dr. Foster. I now recognize the 
Congresswoman from California, Representative Kim.
    Mrs. Kim. Thank you very much, Chair. You know, one of the 
recommendations in the Committee on Space Nuclear Propulsion 
Technology's report on space nuclear propulsion is for NASA to 
develop consistent figures of merit and technical expertise to 
allow for an objective comparison of the ability of NEP and NTP 
systems to meet requirements for a 2039 launch of the baseline 
mission. Dr. Lal, I have a question for you. Has NASA 
officially adopted this recommendation and commenced 
demonstrates it can compare NEP and NTP systems, and if so, 
when can the Committee expect the results of this study?
    Dr. Lal. So, Congresswoman, yes, NASA has accepted that 
recommendation. We are completing a study, and it is in review 
by external non-advocacy experts. The basic takeaway from the 
study I can summarize in three quick bullets. We found that 
both NTP and NEP--systems have the potential to fulfill the 
mission requirements for a fast transit to Mars in the 2030's. 
However, as we've been discussing, it's a different set of 
challenges for both, with NEP advantage in lower mass and fewer 
launch vehicles. Those are kind of the big picture takeaways, 
and we will make sure that once the report is reviewed and 
updated, we can get it to you.
    Mrs. Kim. Thank you, Dr. Lal. Maybe to any panelist, I have 
a question for one or all of you. How are departments and 
agencies collaborating on SNPP systems? Are they conducting 
regular technical exchanges among SNPP programs?
    Dr. Myers. I----
    Mrs. Kim. Mr. Myers?
    Dr. Myers. I would say that, yes, they are working very 
closely together, to my knowledge. I'm not directly involved, 
but I have spoken to various people in the agencies, and they 
are actually directly engaging. The Department of Energy, the 
Department of Defense, and NASA are working very closely 
together, and Dr. Lal will probably be able to speak directly 
to this.
    Dr. Lal. I'd be happy to. So as Dr. Myers said, DARPA is 
developing an NTP flight demonstration that is representative 
of a high thrust system needed for national security--near the 
Moon operations. Of course, such a system would provide NASA 
with valuable knowledge in the area, including things like 
launch regulations, reactor, and engine operation, and thrust 
control for future NASA and other missions. On this particular 
program, which is called DRACO, we have a memorandum of 
understanding (MOU) in place. NASA's Marshall Space Flight 
Center is supporting this effort. At DOE, the Idaho National 
Lab (INL) is getting upgraded, and that could be used, and INL 
is also handling some of the early design contracts.
    Another part of DOD, we are--I'm struggling with what--
stands for. It'll come to me. We are working together. So they 
are developing a ground-based reactor for forward bases, and we 
are working with them on fuel production, because they're also 
looking at HALEU. They're not identical fuels, but similar 
enough that we can collaborate. And, again, we have an MOU in 
place with the Pelley Program. DOE is, of course, integral to 
our efforts. At NASA we work with the Idaho National Lab, Los 
Alamos National Lab, Oak Ridge National Lab, and DOE tends to 
provide technical oversight, and support, and reactor, and fuel 
manufacturing, and providing testing facilities. So very strong 
relationships with the Department of Energy, and Department of 
Defense, and of course, private industry.
    Mr. Meholic. And Congresswoman, if I may also, The 
Aerospace Corporation is also intermingled with all of the 
programs that Dr. Myers and Dr. Lal mentioned, in addition to 
our connections with Space Command and the Space Force 
interests also in this type of technology for national security 
missions. We're also involved with launch acquisition for all 
of these projects as well, both for the NASA project and for 
DRACO, which have, you know, more ``immediate''--well, shorter 
term requirements, or desirements, for a potential flight test 
of these types of systems.
    Mrs. Kim. Well, since--I've got little time left here, but 
I do want to ask, how far along are other countries in advanced 
in space propulsion? You know, are there any key technology 
areas in which the U.S. does not lead?
    Dr. Myers. Well--perhaps--I mean, I can--so Russia has a 
nuclear--a significant nuclear electric propulsion development 
program, and they have been talking about launching in the 
2030's a significant nuclear electric system. I could not 
comment on whether or not--on how far along they are. I don't 
have that kind of insight. It does seem to be more advanced 
than what we're doing today. And perhaps Dr. Lal, or other 
witnesses, have other insights.
    Dr. Lal. I would add to that that Russia has been launching 
power reactors for the last 20 or 30 years, so they do have a 
huge base of--an operational expertise that we don't. We 
launched a power reactor in 1965, and since then we have not 
launched any nuclear fission systems. With respect to other 
countries, there are efforts in China to be developing space 
nuclear propulsion systems. They have similar goals as ours, to 
be getting to Mars in the 2030's. We don't have too many more 
details on the specifics, but we can say that China has a very 
aggressive space development program, and they are seeking to 
have global parity in this area.
    Mrs. Kim. Well, I think my time is up, but, you know, 
asking the obvious question, so what can we in Congress do to 
make sure that the United States stays competitive and, you 
know, compete with Russia, China, and other countries that 
are--far advanced than us?
    Chairman Beyer. Congresswoman Kim, since--I think we should 
move on, because the time's up, but we're going to do a second 
round.
    Mrs. Kim. Thank you.
    Chairman Beyer. You're most welcome to stay for that 
important question. And with that second round, let me first 
yield to our Chairwoman, Congresswoman Johnson, if she has any 
questions.
    Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. No, I do not have 
any questions at this time.
    Chairman Beyer. Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. So let me 
begin with the second round, to be followed by Ranking Member 
Babin. First, for Dr. Chang-Diaz, it seems fairly clear, 
through this last hour plus, that without nuclear propulsion, 
it's going to be very difficult to get to Mars and back, and to 
manage the cargo, and to run the stuff that's on the planet 
itself. Is this actually true? Can we think about Mars just 
using the traditional chemical propulsion systems, or do we 
need to double down and understand that one of those versions 
of nuclear propulsion is--for going to Mars?
    Dr. Chang-Diaz. Well, my personal opinion is that, you 
know, you can go to Mars today, if you want to, with chemical 
rockets. I mean, you--we know how to--the physics will allow 
you to do that, but it will be a very fragile mission, and it 
will be a mission that--you know, any contingency would be--
would put the astronauts in peril, and then it could be a, you 
know, a really bad day. So, to me, it is important that we do 
the homework, and we do it right, and we take a little longer 
to, you know, to get to Mars, but do it with a very robust 
frame--you know, technology infrastructure.
    And I was going to say, in all these discussions, that--I 
really believe the Moon is a crucial component of this whole 
architecture, and particularly for nuclear electric propulsion. 
When you're talking about multi-megawatt rockets, plasma 
engines, we're not going to test those engines on the Earth. 
Most likely you're not going to test them in flight either. You 
probably will have to test them on the surface of the Moon, and 
we may have to set up a facility on the Moon to fire these 
engines for the full duration of their burn, which would be 
months, and verify that, in fact, they do work, and they're 
reliable, so----
    Chairman Beyer. Dr. Chang-Diaz, is--that's a perfect pivot 
to my question for Dr. Myers, because I thought--one of the 
biggest things I took out of your testimony was the need to be 
thinking about testing these engines on Earth full scale, 
rather than trying to test them in space. Can you expand on 
that? And especially--I know--I guess--I don't know whether it 
was Mr. French or Mr. Meholic talked about the impossible 
regulations on Earth right now, but, you know, or Dr. Chang-
Diaz's notion that we'd have to test them on the Moon.
    Dr. Myers. So we did not find it to be impossible to test 
on Earth, and I personally have spent months thinking about 
this, and doing the analyses with colleagues. I've led teams 
that have done these evaluations. It is a challenge, yes, but 
we're talking about human missions to Mars, which will be 
humanity's greatest endeavor. And--so we're talking about an 
enormous project. Building the ground test facilities, NASA has 
done studies, I've contributed to, other panelists have 
contributed to looking at nuclear thermal propulsion ground 
tests, and it is feasible to do. It's not cheap, but it is 
feasible to do. And our Committee did not find a way to avoid 
that kind of testing on the ground in order to demonstrate the 
reliability.
    Similarly, with nuclear electric propulsion, we found that 
it was feasible, it is feasible, to test certainly the lithium 
MPD thrusters. It's one of their benefits, because they have 
condensable propellant. And so, in fact, right now there is an 
existing facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory which can be 
used to test a two-megawatt nuclear electric rocket--plasma 
rocket, the MPD--the lithium MPD thruster. Similarly, others--
at NASA Glenn there's the Space Power Facility that is in 
Northern Ohio. That facility can be upgraded--can likely be 
upgraded to test the hull thrusters, and potentially VASIMR, 
depending on the scale, and the modularity, that is proposed 
for these different systems. One of the questions that we need 
to answer--one of the technical questions we need to answer is 
how do we--for nuclear electric propulsion, what is the level 
of modularity that is feasible, and how do we--do we have to 
test a multi-megawatt engine, or do we put multiple 500-
kilowatt engines? And then we can test the 500-kilowatt 
engines, and do a different kind of test for the integration, 
for example.
    And so we--the Committee had these debates, and got lots of 
input from the community, again, the government, academia, and 
industry, and our consensus was that it is feasible. It's not 
cheap. I didn't say it was cheap, I--but it is quite feasible, 
and in some cases with existing facilities, to do the ground 
testing required for the nuclear electric rocket. I think Mr. 
Meholic mentioned very--he made some excellent points about--
remember the other subsystems, the reactor, the power 
conversion system, the radiator, the power management and 
distribution system. All of those systems have to be tested. A 
key difference between nuclear thermal and nuclear electric is 
that nuclear thermal is a much more integrated--and--it's much 
more difficult to separate the subsystems so that you can do 
modular ground testing. You really need to test full scale, 
fully integrated systems for nuclear thermal. That was our 
committee consensus. Whereas nuclear electric you could break 
it up into modular pieces, and as long as the interfaces are 
very well defined and controlled, we found that we could 
likely--in fact, we were sure you can design test facilities on 
the ground.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Dr.----
    Dr. Myers. So I hope that answers----
    Chairman Beyer [continuing]. Myers. Let's move back to our 
Ranking Member, who, the last time he spoke, was delving that 
exact question. So----
    Mr. Babin. Exactly.
    Chairman Beyer [continuing]. Congress--Congressman Babin.
    Mr. Babin. Yes, sir, thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, if 
I may, I'd like to thank all the witnesses today, but I'd also 
like to give just a moment of special recognition to Dr. 
Franklin Chang-Diaz, because I believe the work that Dr. Diaz 
and his team at Ad Astra are accomplishing on their VASIMR 
engine will revolutionize space travel and transform the 
trajectory of our space industry. And so I want to thank you 
again. And just--back to my question that our Chairman just 
mentioned on the state of thruster technology, I know that 
there's been some significant success, as I just mentioned in 
the--since the Academy report came out, and I'd like to give 
Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz a little bit of time to find out here 
what his thoughts on this is. And so if--I will just let you 
give us a few of your thoughts here, and whatever time you need 
to take up to the--my remaining time.
    Dr. Chang-Diaz. Thank you, Dr. Babin.
    Mr. Babin. OK.
    Dr. Chang-Diaz. Thank you very much for your comments. We 
are very happy with the results that we've obtained. The key on 
the work that we've been doing is to integrate, you know, to 
build the entire package, and test the entire rocket engine in 
the vacuum environment. Many of these electric thrusters that 
are being tested are tested in sort of--some parts of the 
thruster are inside the vacuum, other pieces are outside, and 
they are not quite ready to be vacuum compatible. And so we 
have endeavored to package it all, and to deliver a TRL-5, so a 
technology readiness level five, package that will have all the 
characteristics of something that you could actually fly. And 
that is something that we're very proud of, and has been 
accomplished thanks to private investment, and also NASA 
support.
    So this combination of effort from the space agency, 
together with funding from the private sector, is changing the 
chemistry of things, changing the paradigm. Going back to the 
Moon is going to be also a commercial activity, lots of--
there's going to be a lot of traffic to the Moon, and I think 
that we need to start thinking of the Moon as a place of real 
interesting work, like what we're doing today with the 
International Space Station, that, you know, began to--as a 
very, you know, collection of tests, projects, and experiments 
now has become a more commercial activity. And to do that we 
need to have an infrastructure of high-power electric thrusters 
that can service that transportation path between low Earth 
orbit and the Moon.
    So I'm trying to think of the entire architecture as we 
move further and further into the future, and not just about an 
isolated mission to Mars. I don't want to get us in the same, 
you know, sort of pitfall of the Apollo Program, where we just 
went and landed on the Moon, and then, you know, a whole half a 
century passed, and we didn't do any more because, you know, 
the race to the Moon had been won. We need to do this in a 
sustainable way so that it continues to progress, and move 
further and further out, with the private sector very much 
engaged.
    Mr. Babin. OK. Thank you so very much. And I also want to 
say congratulations on being selected one of Goldman-Sachs's 
100 most intriguing entrepreneurs of 2021 as well----
    Dr. Chang-Diaz. Well, thank you.
    Mr. Babin [continuing]. Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz, good man. 
I also--I've got a little bit of time left here, so I'd like to 
direct a question to Mr. French, if I could. Highly enriched 
uranium, HEU, raises proliferation concerns, and restricts the 
number of private sector organizations that could contribute to 
development. Recent proposals have favored high-assay low-
enriched uranium, or HALEU, to address these concerns. But 
according to the Academy report, technical feasibility, 
performance, safety, fuel availability, costs, and schedule 
considerations do not favor HEU or HALEU. Should NASA conduct a 
comprehensive assessment of the relative merits and challenges 
associated with HEU and HALEU, and should that assessment 
consider how such a decision impacts U.S. industry? Mr. French, 
if you don't mind?
    Mr. French. Yes, thank you, sir. I'll defer to some of my 
other panelists here on some of the technical aspects of that, 
but I will say that NASA's activities already are on--looking 
at lower enriched uranium options, and that is what industry is 
responding to and working on. That also aligns very well with 
the new launch framework, and the testing regimes that increase 
feasibility. So industry is very much focused on a lower 
enriched uranium framework, and that is what our government 
partners are looking at, and what--the partnerships NASA is 
engaged in. And then maybe I'll hand it off to some of my other 
panelists on some of the technical aspects there.
    Dr. Myers. I would just say that I agree exactly with what 
Mr. French said. Since the Academy report, and even during the 
Academy report, NASA was reaching the conclusion that high-
assay low-enriched uranium was fine. It worked fine, it met the 
performance requirements, and so NASA has--and as, you know, 
industry also has focused on high-assay, low-enriched uranium. 
And as we discussed, as Dr. Lal, I think, discussed, that helps 
with the proliferation concerns, and the launch regulation 
concerns as well.
    Mr. Babin. Excellent. Thank you----
    Dr. Myers. I think we may be beyond that question.
    Mr. Babin [continuing]. You bet. Well, I--my time has 
expired, Mr. Chairman, so I will--I'll yield back. Thank you.
    Chairman Beyer. Yes, thank you, Dr. Babin. Thanks for 
hearing in the--hanging in there. Let me now recognize again 
our one nuclear physicist, Dr. Foster.
    Mr. Foster. I'm actually a high energy particle physicist, 
so I don't have my, you know, neutron absorption cross-section 
memorized the way you all do. But--let's see, a couple of 
things. Well, first, I want to point out that the advanced 
reactor designs that are being pursued on the commercial front 
are almost uniformly highly-enriched low-assay uranium, and so 
I think there's a lot of commonality there that everyone will 
benefit from.
    And so--now I'd like to change the subject completely, and 
this--it's my considered belief that this is going to work, 
that there is a good, very efficient solution for the high 
specific impulse, but low thrust, you know, design corner that 
you need to go from one--low Earth orbit to other planets, all 
right? I am less sanguine about progress that we're making on 
getting into low Earth orbit. And there are all kinds of--you 
know, of ideas out there. And so if I could, with some of my 
time remaining, maybe starting with Dr. Chang-Diaz, you know, 
if Congress was to put some money into some of these high risk, 
high payoff methods for getting stuff into low Earth orbit 
without, you know, just using the same chemical fuels that 
Wernher von Braun came to 60 years ago, then what is your--
what--where would--where should we put our money?
    Dr. Chang-Diaz. Well, you know, I really think that the 
chemical rocket is a pretty good way to get things into low 
Earth orbit, and it's hard to beat, particularly locks and 
hydrogen, which are non-polluting, and it's a pretty nice 
technology that's been developed. But what I think needs to 
happen is that low Earth orbit is really a staging ground. It 
really needs to be a staging ground, and what we need to put 
money into is the infrastructure to get stuff from low Earth 
orbit to points beyond. And that is most likely going to start 
with solar--high power solar electric engines, which will then 
migrate into nuclear electric engines for deeper path into 
space.
    But the solar electric option is also a good one for the 
vicinity of the Moon and the Earth, and our company envisions, 
essentially, a system of electric tugs, trucks, you know, to 
deliver all the cargo that needs to be delivered, to build that 
sort of railroad, you know, that will be able to support 
operations on the Moon, on the surface, and also in what we 
consider to be the lunar shipyard, which is where we think the 
ship to Mars will be built. But it's a whole infrastructure 
buildup that needs to be created, and I think the government 
has a strong role to play here with the private sector.
    Mr. Foster. Um-hum.
    Dr. Lal. So, to your question, Representative Foster, 
there's a lot of private investment going in launch to low 
Earth orbit, you know, many billions of dollars, and, of 
course, there has been a lot of government investment too, 
which is why we have, you know, companies like SpaceX, and Blue 
Origin, and Rocket----
    Mr. Foster. Yes, I mean, SpaceX is using the same chemical 
fuels that----
    Dr. Lal. Yes.
    Mr. Foster [continuing]. Were explored in the 1950's, 
right? And so----
    Dr. Lal. And I think the private sector is lowering costs 
by, for example, building the entire rocket with 3D printers. 
If we have to make an investment, I think a better investment, 
other than launch, would be on--what is it we do once we are in 
space? I mean, we need to invest in real commercialization. We 
need to--if you're making things in space, to bring it back 
down on Earth, or if we are making things in space to take them 
deeper into space. I think we have a gap in that investment. 
Launch--but just to address your question at the core, there 
are some companies that are working on, you know, centrifugal 
methods, so there are--there is a variety of investment. And I 
don't think--if we are making a decision on where the 
government needs to put money, that would be the place to put 
money. I think we need to focus on active--activities in space.
    Dr. Chang-Diaz. Exactly right.
    Mr. Meholic. And, if I may, this is--another area too is 
that these launch companies that Dr. Lal mentioned--well, some 
of the launch companies, as well as others, the capabilities 
that they're developing are actually for fairly low masses to 
orbit, right? So the kind of masses that we're talking about 
for these kinds of Mars missions and assemblies are, you know, 
tens of metric tons, which is very limiting to what kinds of 
launch vehicles will be available by the timeframe they're 
needed to actually deliver that. So we might have Starship, we 
might have Falcon Heavy, we might have SLS, right? Other than 
that, these other smaller launch vehicles just may not have the 
capability to launch the required masses to the assembly 
orbits.
    Mr. Foster. OK. I was just thinking, 50 years out, are we 
going to be sitting there looking at, you know, kerosene and 
liquid oxygen for big boosters, or, you know, is--whether--you 
know, that's my reading on why the Apollo Program sort of ended 
up being terminal, is that there were not--you know, as the 
Lindbergh flight was followed by more and more efficient 
vehicles, that--you know, there isn't even a factor of two 
increase in the performance of heavy boosters since the Saturn 
booster.
    Dr. Myers. That----
    Mr. Foster. And that's where----
    Dr. Myers [continuing]. Certainly is true----
    Mr. Foster. That's what--the block I'm trying to see my way 
around here. Anyway, my time has expired.
    Dr. Myers. But the cost has come down by a factor of 100. 
The cost has come way down by changing the architecture----
    Mr. Meholic. Um-hum.
    Dr. Myers [continuing]. And changing the production 
methods, as Dr. Lal mentioned, and so, from a cost perspective, 
we have made progress.
    Mr. Meholic. And as just one final point, I think, is even 
at the terminal end of the Apollo Program there was a--there 
were some number of studies that said if they were to put a 
nuclear thermal propulsion stage on the upper stage of the 
Saturn, it could've delivered twice the payload to the Moon.
    Mr. Foster. Um-hum. Yes. Yes.
    Chairman Beyer. That--Congressman Foster, thank you very 
much.
    Mr. Foster. Um-hum.
    Chairman Beyer. By the way, we've gotten--we've expanded 
our narrow topic of nuclear propulsion to so much of space and 
NASA, so congratulations. This is great. And now I think we'll 
wrap up with the distinguished Randy Weber, Congressman from 
Texas. Randy, thank you for your patience in coming in and out, 
but--floor is yours.
    Mr. Weber. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate 
all the witnesses today, the ability to hop on the Subcommittee 
here. My question is for all the witnesses, whoever wants to 
weigh in first. What is the power--and I'm in late, so I 
apologize if you all have discussed this. What is the power 
range for the current demonstration of a fission power system 
on the surface of the Moon, and how is that program aligned 
with mission needs for, and potential future government and 
commercial applications of in space power, NEP, as well as 
terrestrial nuclear power? And I'll open it up to whoever wants 
to answer first.
    Dr. Myers. So I'll go first. I spent a lot of--thank you 
for the question, because it's actually something I was going 
to try to interject later on. We--it did come up earlier----
    Mr. Weber. I'll----
    Dr. Myers [continuing]. As----
    Mr. Weber. I'll send you a bill in the mail.
    Dr. Myers. Exact--yes. So one of the things that we did 
discuss earlier was the need for scaling from the fission 
surface power, which is currently targeted at 10 to 40 
kilowatts, or that range, to the megawatt class that we're 
really talking about for the space nuclear propulsion systems. 
That scaling is very challenging, and it--as Greg Meholic has 
commented, all of these different subsystems have to work 
together. You've got to have the reactor, the power conversion 
system, the power management and distribution system, the 
radiator. All of that for nuclear electric propulsion must work 
together with the electric rocket.
    That scaling from 10 to 40 kilowatts to the megawatt class, 
factor of 100 or so, that's really hard to do unless we really 
think carefully about the subsystems that we choose to 
demonstrate and use on the fission surface power systems. So I 
would--you know, I would want to be sure that the subsystems 
approach that we use for the fission surface power are, in 
fact, relevant to the megawatt scale propulsion systems that 
we've been talking about. And it's--there are some options 
which are not scalable, they do not scale, and so we need to 
not choose those options for fission surface power, if we can 
avoid them. And I'm sure other of the witnesses--others of the 
witnesses have things to say as well.
    Dr. Lal. I can add to that. Agree with everything Dr. Myers 
said, and Representative Weber, you have accurately recognized 
that there's connections between all four systems, right? So we 
have terrestrial fission systems--so we have all these 
companies developing new, improved ways of developing small 
modular reactors on Earth for, you know, reducing greenhouse 
gas warming. There are--we're talking about a fission reactor 
for Mars--sorry, for Moon and Mars, which is in the--you know, 
for--the consideration is in the 10 to 40 kilowatt range, but 
if you want to be doing industrial scale ISRU (In-Situ Resource 
Utilization), extraction of volatiles or water on either the 
Moon or Mars, you need to have much higher levels of power, so, 
you know, you're going to the megawatt range, so at some point 
we would need to go from, you know, tens of kilowatts to 
thousands of kilowatts.
    Then there is NTP, where, again, the commonality is--you 
know, there's a reactor in all of these areas, so there are 
commonalities, and--especially if you want to move forward with 
NTP, does--you know, it gives a reason to be doing industrial 
scale ISRU on the Moon. So, for example, if you extract water, 
and you separate it into hydrogen and oxygen, now you have, you 
know, some--a mission pull for ISRU on the Moon, which for the 
moment we don't have. And, of course, I wanted to make sure 
that cryogenic food management, which is an area where NASA has 
a lot of investment, it's kind of critical to all of our space 
applications, right?
    And then, of course, NEP, we--as Roger mentioned, it has 
extensibility from surface power. For the moment, for science 
missions, because, you know, if you're looking at 10 to 40 
kilowatts, it's not a human rated--or human scale NEP system, 
but it's outstanding for doing science in the solar system, 
going to Neptune, going to Pluto, and instead of just doing 
these fly bys, where we don't collect a whole lot of data, we 
can go into orbit, right? We can collect more data. So they're 
all connected, and we really do need to keep this whole of 
enterprise approach as we think through our nuclear enterprise.
    Mr. Meholic. And just to--in the final closing seconds, I 
want to thank Dr. Myers for referring back to my comments as 
well, and for you, Congressman Weber. In addition to what Dr. 
Myers and Dr. Lal had said, you know, the subsystems that were 
referred to may have to take a different form for what 
there's--used on the Moon versus what's used on Mars, right, as 
far as reliability, mass, size, materials, capabilities. One 
has more gravity than the other, so how does that affect the 
physics of the process, fluid--so there's all those different 
things, but there is some level of extensibility across the 
range there, but each one is going to be very mission unique, 
and very, you know, very sensitive to those requirements.
    Mr. Weber. Well, thank you for that. I guess that's a broad 
scientific way of saying stay tuned. So thank you all so much. 
I yield back.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you, Congressman Weber. And we are 
now at the witching hour. Everyone has had a chance to speak at 
least once. Thank you very, very much. It's been a terrific 
hearing, with obviously an enormous amount of knowledge, 
background, and expertise, so thank you very much. The record 
will remain open for two weeks for additional statements from 
the Members, and for any additional questions the Committee may 
want to ask of the witnesses. So with that, witness are 
excused, the hearing is now adjourned, and we look forward to 
seeing you on many future NASA discussions.
    Voice. Thank you all very, very much for your time.
    [Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                Appendix

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                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

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