Word: nautiluses
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...July 1951 Rickover was passed over by a selection board consisting, in this case, of nine admirals. This was bad for but not fatal to his career. He went on with his work. In June 1952 the keel of the Nautilus was laid in the yard of the Electric Boat Co., Groton, Conn. President Truman presided over the ceremonies, along with the Secretaries and Chiefs of Staff of the Army, Navy and Air Force, and the chairman of the AEC. Captain Rickover, in civilian clothes even for this occasion, kept in the background, but his work and vision...
...spite of all the uproar, he had not spent much of his thinking time on the selection board. Too much was happening. The Nautilus was growing fast. So was the Sea Wolf. In the blank-walled building on the Idaho desert, a crucial moment was approaching. The prototype reactor was almost complete; preliminary tests had been encouraging. On March 31 the AEC announced that the reactor had "gone critical." In AEC language, this means that it was producing power...
...been phenomenal. It produces more power than it was designed for. It has given little trouble and has proved compatible with the mock-up submarine that was built around it. So much has been learned by its frequent operation that the second model, which will actually go into the Nautilus, is an even better reactor...
Dominant Pigboats. There are still some skeptics in the Navy, but as the Nautilus approaches her launching date, a fever of excitement is spreading in naval circles. The submariners, who have long grimly called themselves "the submerged service," now look forward to a time when their new boats will be the dominant ships of the Navy. The Nautilus will be the first "true" submarine, wholly independent of the atmosphere...
...Nautilus will certainly make 25 knots, and there is good reason to hope that she will make 30 knots (35 m.p.h.). The best destroyers steam only slightly faster (when the sea is not too rough), and most other small escort vessels are sluggards by comparison. If necessary, nuclear submarines can be made faster than any surface-going vessel. Since they lose no power in piling up waves, they get more speed out of the same expenditure of energy...