Word: rockets
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...from Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory last week in the hope of finding something worth putting in the paper. One routine announcement noted that William F. Carlson of Bristol, Conn. had been hired for the new "N" Division, which, said the release, "is concerned with research and development of nuclear rocket propulsion...
Power Problem. The AEC did not say how feasible nuclear rockets look. Most scientific judgments about them have been pessimistic. Rocket motors develop their thrust by burning fuel with an oxidizer and expelling the products of combustion at high speed through a tail pipe. The energy of combustion is necessary to make the gases move fast, but the mass (weight) of the gases is also necessary. No mass, no thrust...
...source of energy, one pound of U-235 producing as many calories as 1,500 tons of coal. A modest amount of U-235 could, so far as energy is concerned, propel a commodious space cruiser to the moon and back. But energy is not enough. A uranium-burning rocket motor would have no products of combustion to shoot out of its tail pipe, and without some massive material to jettison, the motor would have no thrust...
There are ways of getting around this failing of nuclear rockets. The most obvious is to take along a stock of material that can be gasified by the nuclear heat and shot out the tail at great speed. The trouble with this solution, of course, is that the weight of the material may make the nuclear rocket hardly more efficient than a chemically fueled one. In addition, a heavy shield must be carried to protect the crew from nuclear radiation...
Otherwise, Satellite is rocketshipshape with searching dialogue ("You knew the rocket was my job when you married me"), a crisis (the bomb sticks to the ship's hull), an addled scientist (Donald Wolfit), and a final clinch between Reporter Maxwell and craggy-browed Pilot Kieron Moore. After 85 harrowing minutes Satellite makes port, leaving the corn barrier sadly shattered...