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Project Kiwi Rover Reactor Development Program

Project Kiwi was the flightless reactor that taught America how a nuclear rocket might fly. Built by Los Alamos as the first major test phase of Project Rover, the Kiwi series proved that a solid-core reactor could heat hydrogen to rocket-useful temperatures, survive violent liquid-hydrogen flow problems, restart, and point toward a practical nuclear thermal engine. It was not a secret operational Mars ship and it was not a deployed nuclear weapon in orbit. It was something more concrete and in many ways stranger: a real Cold War reactor-development program where hydrogen, uranium fuel, graphite, beryllium, remote hot cells, and Nevada desert test stands converged to create the engineering foundation for NERVA.