Word: kiwi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Blood All the Way. The Australian (New Zealand's "Kiwi" contribution to the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps is a 150-man, six-gun, 105-mm. battery) approach to the tactics of the Viet Nam war was honed in jungle warfare against the Japanese in World War II and the Communists in Malaya. Their credo: avoid trails, avoid villages, avoid resupply; slide into the jungle like a snake and hide, then terrorize the enemy at will. "Fortunately, we've trained and equipped ourselves for such a war as this in Southeast Asia for years," says Brigadier...
...reactor was a Kiwi, an obsolete experimental nuclear rocket engine built at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and used only for brief tests. It was set on an expendable railroad car on Nevada's desolate Jackass Flats and surrounded with a motley array of test objects-nuclear fuels, explosives, radiation detectors, air samplers. A stout steel net was hung to catch any flying debris, and the scientists retired to the control building two miles from the condemned power plant to wait for a northeast wind that would carry any radioactive fallout away from Nevada's inhabited areas...
Fireball & Sparklers. Kiwi was always excessively touchy. In a cylindrical core not much bigger than a garbage can, it could generate 1,000,000 kw. of heat, as much as a large coal-burning power plant. When in normal operation, it was kept in uneasy check by elaborate control systems and cooled by liquid hydrogen with a temperature close to absolute zero. Last week it was given no cooling at all, and the controls that kept its reaction in check were arranged so they could be removed in a fraction of a second. Test Director Keith Boyer hoped that Kiwi...
...like giant Fourth of July sparklers. Observers heard a loud bang and felt a modest shock wave. As the cloud began to dissipate, three Air Force bombers swooped into it, collecting air samples. Then men wearing respirators and full safety suits stepped cautiously within 200 yds. of ground zero. Kiwi had disappeared. Nothing was left on the seared site but the railroad car with its back broken, and a few shreds of burning electric cable...
...test, Dr. Boyer explained, matched almost exactly the theoretical calculations done at Los Alamos. What Kiwi's flaming death proved was that if nuclear rockets are ever used in space, they will not need explosive charges to break them up after they are spent. They can be turned into small and relatively harmless particles by a signal commanding them to commit suicide...