Science Magazine Podcast A chimpanzee ‘civil war,’ and NASA plans for nuclear propulsion
Apr 9, 2026
Aaron Sandell, a primatologist who co-directs the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, describes a rare, violent split in a long-studied chimp community. Hannah Richter, a D.C.-based science reporter, explains NASA’s surprise plan for a 2028 fission-powered Mars mission. They discuss chimp social fragmentation and lethal raids, and the technical, bureaucratic, and programmatic hurdles of launching a space reactor.
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Fission Propulsion Enables Farther Faster Spaceflight
- Nuclear fission in space can dramatically reduce propellant mass and enable much faster travel to distant solar system destinations.
- NASA's 2028 SR-1 Freedom mission is a technology demo using a fission reactor powering electric thrusters to test that capability en route to Mars.
Mars Demo Now, Real Gains On Longer Trips
- SR-1 Freedom's transit to Mars would still take the usual six to nine months, making it primarily a demonstration mission.
- The real payoff is that fission scales: longer missions accelerate more over time, cutting multi-year voyages dramatically.
Mission Built From Existing Pieces Faces Integration Risk
- The SR-1 mission is a Frankensteinian assembly of existing components rather than a single vetted system.
- Thrusters come from the canceled Gateway project, DOE likely supplies a reactor platform (Idaho National Lab), and integration is untested.