Word: seaborg
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When the Kennedy Administration canceled research on the nuclear airplane last March, it seemed that the nuclear-propelled rocket, which is even more difficult to build, might be grounded too. But in San Francisco last week at a meeting of the American Ordnance Association, Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, gave a highly hopeful report on the atomic missile. The first one, he said, may be ready for blast...
...quality of its fuel. And as chemically fueled engines approach peak efficiency, the fuel they require becomes increasingly difficult to manage. But a nuclear rocket-in which hard-to-handle hydrogen will be heated by an atomic reactor-would offer ample recompense for its built-in problems. Its thrust, Seaborg explained, would be far greater than that available from any combination of chemical fuels; it would open the way to space voyages impossible with any other missile...
...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...
...urgently needed one vital component: a chemical element that was fissionable (explosive) but not so radioactive that it would disintegrate before the big bang was touched off. The bomb builders found what they wanted at the University of California's famed Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, where Drs. Glenn Seaborg and Edwin McMillan had put together some synthetic plutonium, element 94. Until then, plutonium was no more than a lab curiosity, but it proved to be properly fissionable, and it was so slightly radioactive that only half of it would disintegrate in 24,100 years...
...Seaborg comes to his new job with no entangling alliances in the touchy international tangle over the problems of nuclear-bomb test suspension or control. At a time when scientists of all varieties have spoken out with self-asserted, and often politically motivated, authority, Seaborg has concentrated quietly upon his own work. He has no intention of commenting on test bans until he bones up on detection systems and the means of defeating them. Maintaining strict scientific discipline, Glenn Seaborg insists that he is approaching all the intricate demands of his new job "with an open mind...