No. The best model I know of concerning this is GM. The company knew they were headed for bankruptcy and instituted reforms- basically copying the TQM techniques Deming taught the Japanese back in the 1950’s. Unfortunately GM had an institutional creature called the plant manager that for various reasons was very difficult to simply fire and many of these fought the reforms tooth and nail. The plant manager problem was finally solved and quality and efficiency went through the roof – but it was too late to keep the company from going into bankruptcy.

Many of the same characteristics as NASA. The space agency problem is not process, it is destination. LEO and Mars are dead ends that go nowhere.

The wet workshop (Skylab was a “dry workshop) concept and robot lander concepts provide the answer to the “what?”

By abandoning the dead ends of LEO and Mars and redirecting that funding into a lunar return robot landers and empty upper stages can be placed in lunar polar “frozen” orbits. The landers, whose engines can also be used to insert the stages into orbit, can be used to shuttle water and volatiles from the ice deposits to orbit. The SLS can fly 6 to 8 times a year for the same cost as the shuttle program.

The workshops, partially filled with hundreds and eventually thousands of tons of water, attached to each other with tether systems, would provide a one gravity near sea level radiation environment. With no exposure or debilitation concerns these true space stations would provide sanctuaries Beyond Earth Orbit where the real work of building a cislunar infrastructure can begin.

Considering the expense and that Pulse Propulsion typically starts at around an Isp of 10,000 it is not something to sneeze at, it is something to laugh at.
Not worth the trouble in any way shape or form.

“-the ISP to make SSTO feasible.”

No Nuclear Thermal Rocket is going to be launched in the Earth’s atmosphere. Ever.

“NTR’s can also be designed so that the exhaust isn’t radioactive.”

Stop making stuff up.

“So that when you do go to Mars-”

Why go to Mars?

That is the question nobody has an answer to.

If you think it is an appropriate second home for humankind you need to stop guzzling the NewSpace kool-aid.

It is fairly obvious why we need to go to the Moon: the ice for radiation shielding and fuel to effect a cislunar infrastructure. But Mars?

Mars is a dead end.

A nuclear thermal rocket has the thrust to weight ratio to be able to launch something from earths surface, and the ISP to make SSTO feasible. Or a much smaller TSTO carry a respectable payload (whatever you consider that to be)

NTR’s can also be designed so that the exhaust isn’t radioactive. This is a bit harder to accomplish when your vehicle is dropping nuclear bombs out the back end.

For launch from places where you don’t care about adding some radiation, NPP is certainly impressive.

It would/will be very difficult politically to get NTR into use. But once the public has seen that NTR don’t seem to be causing the end of the world, perhaps NPP may become more palatable.

Here are a few others possibilities:

(1) Shelby maintains his position.
(2) The new President (whoever they may be) selects a competent NASA Administrator.
(3) The coalition in Congress (that includes NON space state congressional members – got to love those all caps) holds together, as it has for about six years now.
(4) NASA starts using the SLS for lunar development.

Those are just as possible as yours and I like them better.

Stan Ulam understood that such energy could not be contained by any physical material so he did what genius does and simply made it work without being contained. Freeman Dyson validated the concept with his research. A thousand nuclear detonations prove that it works.

After a half a century Nuclear Pulse Propulsion remains the only practical system. That it is still as politically unacceptable as it was fifty years ago does not change the reality.

Talk about and alternate future.