Word: kiwis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...Rover (nuclear rocket) program, Seaborg said, has already tested a ground-bound model. Kiwi-A. It has demonstrated that a nuclear reactor can heat a flow of high-pressure gaseous hydrogen to proper operating temperature and can keep in operation as long as needed in a space vehicle. The more advanced Kiwi-B. which will be tested soon in Nevada, will use liquid hydrogen for its propellant...
...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...