An unfortunate early design. Hopefully the engineering knowledge and access to far better design tools that have developed in the interleaving ~50 years would allow for a much better design today.
Though my hopes must be tempered by the prospect of greed. It would be better if the government(s) created an open design which could reuse off the shelf or components that any corporation could compete to create.
Eh, no.. a failed concept, to grasp the techological deep roots needed to supply something with specialists and machinery at all times, at a location that is 9 months off limits.
DARPA and NASA are currently developing designs to do exactly that under Kilopower, Megapower, and similar programs. Enabling long duration unmanned deep space missions is explicitly one of NASA's goals with this.
Though my hopes must be tempered by the prospect of greed. It would be better if the government(s) created an open design which could reuse off the shelf or components that any corporation could compete to create.