What that means in practice is that some higher-up chose to give Pike access to the classified parts. Which is pretty weird: Pike's own ship breaks down, he searches for a replacement, and meets with the Discovery - at which point, within a matter of minutes, some Admiral decides he ought to know who Lorca really was. But not that the ship has a spore drive! The fact that they can jump to the other side of the galaxy surprises Pike in the next adventure, which is odd because
a) solving the mystery of the Red Signs absolutely calls for the spore drive, so apparently Pike was vectored to the one and only spore jumper on purpose, by some higher up, but
b) it then should follow that Pike would be informed of this capacity ASAP, lest he say "Not that old science tub, I wanna take over the dreadnought Muscular which is also much closer!", yet
c) the spore drive is also crucial in the whole Lorca switcheroo business, so if Pike is told about Lorca, he should be curious about the special capabilities of the science tub, too: if it can jump between universes, perhaps it could help visit those faraway Red Signs, too?
In some ways, the back of Season 2 was broken about one-third into the season, with the writer-producer changes. But there was a pretty big spinal fracture within the very first episode already, and especially between it and the next one!
Timo Saloniemi