A gangly collection of small, stainless steel pipes lashed together in a hexagonal shape could show Marshall Space Flight Center engineers how to build a nuclear-powered spacecraft. The pipes make up what Marshall engineer Ron Porter calls “a non-nuclear test bed,” meaning it has no nuclear material in it. By super-heating the pipes with electricity, Porter said, NASA and Department of Energy researchers can better understand how a nuclear reactor in space might behave. Nuclear reactions generate a lot of heat.