Word: kiwi
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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. This sort of engine, which nuclear engineers consider a first step only, has been in development at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory for three years under the code name of Project Rover. The first experimental engine, the Kiwi-A (which is not expected to fly, hence the name), is scheduled for testing in Nevada late this year, and an elaborate test setup is being built at Jackass Flats, a safe 20 miles (and many mountains) west of the Atomic Energy Commission's main test base...
...spite of its comparative feebleness, Kiwi-A will do its reacting all by itself. The nearest humans will be at a control point 1½ miles away. When the test is over, Kiwi-A, still intensely radioactive, will be drawn along a railroad track by a remotely controlled locomotive and tucked into a shielded area where it can be inspected by nonhuman hands controlled from behind thick shields...
...Kiwi-A will be only a small beginning. Later will come more ambitious engines of the same general type. The chances are that they will not be used for military purposes; chemical rockets can toss H-bombs cheaper and better. The role of nuclear rockets will be to carry large payloads to orbits around the earth or to the nearer parts of the solar system. They will be particularly good for ferrying supplies to an orbiting space-station. The engine will use only a small part of its uranium fuel during each trip, so if the space-ferry is recoverable...