Word: rocketings
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...appropriately -- destined for the technological trash heap than the one that came to light last week. According to documents made public by the Federation of American Scientists for the express purpose of torpedoing the scheme, the Pentagon has for several years been secretly developing a new kind of booster rocket -- code-named Timberwind -- that would loft giant weapons into space on short notice. Its power source: an onboard nuclear reactor running at extremely high temperatures and spewing radioactive exhaust directly into the atmosphere...
...Timberwind is simple. Just pump liquid hydrogen through a small nuclear reactor heated to several thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The liquid hydrogen is instantly converted to hydrogen gas, which then blasts out of a nozzle. The resulting thrust is two to three times as great as that generated in conventional rocket engines by the explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. Much larger payloads could thus be lifted into orbit...
...reactions that power atom bombs. Although modern nuclear engineering has virtually eliminated the risk of explosions and meltdowns in such reactors, the problem of disposing of radioactive wastes has not gone away. Nor has the stigma attached to nuclear reactors in general. "If anybody tries launching a reactor-powered rocket," says Theodore Taylor, a veteran designer of nuclear devices, "past demonstrations will pale by comparison...
...interested in Timberwind? The reasons date back to the early 1970s, when NASA, with the Pentagon's blessing, decided to put the bulk of its research funds into the reusable space shuttle. Further development of conventional rocket boosters stalled. Now both agencies find themselves bumping into the limited payload capacities of the remaining rockets; NASA for hoisting its space station into orbit and the Pentagon for lifting its big directed-beam Star Wars weapons. The proposed nuclear-powered rockets would more than triple the payload of the U.S.'s most powerful booster, the Titan 4, from 20 tons to more...
Ironically, one of the projects killed in 1972 to make way for the space shuttle was Project Rover, a 17-year, $1.4 billion effort to develop nuclear- powered rockets. More than a dozen prototype engines were built and tested. The same work in today's dollars would cost $25 billion. But Rover was always viewed as a second-stage rocket that would be fired only after it was safely out of the earth's atmosphere. Launching a nuclear rocket from the ground was deemed to pose unacceptable health risks...