Nuclear Thermal Propulsion · Cislunar Logistics · Rapid Solar System Access
Twice the specific impulse.
Engineered to fly.
DARKFORCE is a nuclear thermal rocket engine built on a radial-inflow particle bed reactor: the highest power-density core architecture ever ground-tested, matured with modern materials, manufacturing, and modeling. Hydrogen in, ~2,700 K hydrogen out, and a specific impulse no chemical engine can reach.
Why take this seriously
Funded by the U.S. Space Force
DARKFORCE development is under contract through a SpaceWERX Direct-to-Phase-II SBIR award, with risk-retirement testing and analysis under way now.
The team that restarted NTP
Our CEO initiated DRACO at DARPA. Our founders have directed DARPA's Tactical Technology Office, stood up the Space Development Agency, and spent careers in space nuclear power and propulsion.
An architecture with test heritage
The particle bed reactor was ground-tested in the 1990s under the Space Nuclear Thermal Propulsion program. DARKFORCE modernizes it rather than reinventing it.
The regulatory path is engineered too
Space nuclear launch approval is a solvable systems problem, and our DARK SCOUT pathfinder is designed to solve it first, setting precedent for NTP, NEP, and fission surface power. Our founders have run these interagency processes from the inside.
The argument
Use each propulsion mode where it wins.
Chemical rockets are unbeatable for climbing out of Earth's gravity well: thrust is what matters, and they have it. But once you're in orbit, the calculus flips. Every kilometer per second of ΔV bought with a 450-second engine costs roughly twice the propellant of one bought at 900 seconds. For the recurring, high-energy legs of cislunar transport, that difference compounds into the mission.
Our answer is intermodal: chemical launch to low Earth orbit, then a DARKFORCE-powered orbital transfer vehicle for the legs where the rocket equation punishes chemistry. Same logic as containerized shipping: trucks to the port, ships across the ocean.