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Sunday, January 19, 2003 Bush Administration Supporting Nukes in Space? A nuclear thermal rocket engine. Credit: NASA According to a Los Angeles Times article, the White House is supporting the expansion of the newly formed Nuclear Systems Initiative in its 2004 budget. NASA spokesman Don Savage said that, while the information was not entirely accurate, a new program, Project Prometheus, is "in large part a renaming of part of the NSI that was announced last year." This new program will allegedly be responsible for developing nuclear propulsion engines that can send humans to Mars in 2 months. NASA has stated it expects to spend over $1 billion in the next five years on the program. The article claimed that Bush will announce plans to increase funding in his State of the Union address on January 28th. @ 16:11 EST