@michael_w_busch Lets consider the other side: A reactor is flight-qualified, when it flies. The level of quality that it needs to have is mostly political, not physical. The DOE has enough suitable research cores around, often in cooperation with NASA. Also nothing was cancelled to allow the Freedom-1 mission, it exists because Gateway station was cancelled and existing and already delivered hardware needed to find a new use or get scrapped. And the latter would upset the Europeans more....