Word: kiwi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Jackass Flat, Nev., the AEC carried out, and later announced in deadpan fashion, the first full-power ground test of the Kiwi-A nuclear rocket engine-an event most newspapers ignored. Developed at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory by a team headed by Dr. Raemer E. Schreiber, the engine worked perfectly. All details (thrust, temperature, etc.) were secret, but Senator Clinton P. Anderson is officially entitled to hear them as chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Wired Anderson to Dr. Norris E. Bradbury, director of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory: CONGRATULATIONS. THIS...
...Kiwi's mission was not to fly. As the keystone of AEC's Project Rover, it was supposed to determine the feasibility of nuclear rockets. Though AEC has never defined just what it considers "feasible," Dr. Schreiber has hinted that a satisfactory nuclear rocket must be a single-stage vehicle with enough thrust to escape from the earth with 15% of its take-off weight as payload. Now Kiwi-A has apparently demonstrated that this kind of power is feasible...
...Kiwi-A's actual thrust is probably quite small. The difficulties are so great that no one knew whether such an engine would work at all. The reactor must run extremely hot; otherwise the hydrogen will not form an effective gas jet. Thus Kiwi-A's innards are probably made of tricky, heat-resistant metals such as tungsten, tantalum and molybdenum. Control is far more difficult than with chemical engines, because the flow of hydrogen must be balanced perfectly against the production of energy by the reactor. A slight maladjustment of the controls might melt the nuclear engine...
...Dumbo, on Condor. Nothing like that happened last week. As scientists and spectators, including Senator Wallace F. Bennett of Utah and Congressman Craig Hosmer of California, watched from a shelter two miles away, Kiwi strutted its stuff without a misstep...
Unless the triumphant Los Alamos men decide to give Kiwi-A a second full-power run, last week's test will probably be its finish. After a few days, when radioactivity dies down somewhat, the unshielded reactor will be hauled along a railroad track by a remote-controlled locomotive to a special MAD (Maintenance, Assembly and Disassembly) shop, where mechanical hands will take it apart. The condition of its still deadly interior parts (examined by periscope, TV, or through thick, transparent shields) will tell the Los Alamos men much about how to build nuclear rockets that actually...