Word: reactor
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Triton is the largest submarine ever launched. She displaces 5,850 tons, measures 447½ ft. in length and 37 ft. at the beam, carries two nuclear reactors and a crew of 148, can make a zippy 30 surface knots. By comparison the Nautilus, first U.S. nuclear sub, displaces 2,980 tons, is 300 ft. long, has a 28-ft. beam, one reactor. The Triton, in fact, is not much smaller and slower than a light cruiser of the U.S.'s San Diego class...
...sleek steel hull of a nuclear submarine moved easily and rapidly through the quiet depths, its reactor-driven geared turbines purring, its coffeepots perking, its jukebox playing, its 116-man crew caught up with an unusual sense of excitement. On the submarine's closed-circuit TV screens, the crewmen could see an upward-pointed camera-eye view of an ice pack, lit up by the Arctic's 24-hour-a-day sunlight, like a translucent cloud racing by. In his cabin, a slim U.S. Navy commander wrote out in longhand a couple of messages-one addressed to President...
Nautilus now headed directly toward the North Pole, the place that had drawn Nansen, Amundsen, Wilkins, Peary, now flown over by scheduled airlines but never yet reached by ship. Its speed was rapid, probably in excess of 20 knots. Its depth was below 400 ft. Its reactor was functioning perfectly. Its ship's inertial navigational system-an amazing complex of gyroscopes, accelerometers, depth finders, integrators, trackers, etc. (TIME, April 29, 1957) taken over in a rare salvage from the Air Force's defunct Navaho missile program-kept Nautilus on course and on depth, gave its captain instant readings...
...worst problem will be the reactor itself. The core will have to be small, probably a cylinder a few feet in diameter, but it will have to generate something like 100 times the energy of the massive reactor of Britain's Calder Hall nuclear power station. This means that it will run very hot, and will be kept from flashing into vapor only by the stream of liquid hydrogen forced rapidly through it. On the other hand, the core need work for only a few minutes. By that time the propellant will have been exhausted, and the rocket will...
Another possibility is a rocket engine that uses nuclear fusion of heavy hydrogen instead of fission of uranium. No controlled fusion reactor has yet been constructed for any purpose, and making a light one for rockets will be much harder than making a heavy one for power stations. But the nuclear enthusiasts are not discouraged. Deuterium is cheap, they say, and even if the entire stock were shot out of the nozzle, the fuel for a flight would cost only...