General Atomics

Recognized under Tier 5 — Energy Production & Storage, General Atomics is a nuclear technology company whose General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) division serves as reactor and engine designer for DARPA and NASA's Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program. GA-EMS has completed the Track A, Phase 1 milestones for DRACO, delivering a baseline nuclear thermal propulsion reactor and engine design and successfully testing key reactor components, including high-temperature fuel elements, ahead of a planned cislunar flight demonstration. The company draws on more than seventy years of nuclear reactor and materials development, including work in silicon carbide and ceramic fuel systems, and is separately pursuing fission surface power concepts for lunar and Martian outposts. Nuclear thermal propulsion of the kind General Atomics is building for DRACO promises two to five times the propellant efficiency of chemical rockets, which would shorten Mars transit times and reduce the consumables a crew must carry.