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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 7, 1963)
Development of Nuclear Rocket Seen Necessary for Race To Solar System Editor'! not: It has been charged that the United States it moving too slowly toward development of a nuclear rocket - that it may loie the race to the planets in its pre occupation with reaching the moon. The following dispatch by a UPI space expert ex plores the situation. By JOSEPH L. MYLER Washington (llPlt Space ex perts agree that only the atom's fantastic energy can put men on Mars or fly them around the more distant planets of the solar system. But after eight years of re search and development, and an expenditure of $400 mil lion, a reliable nuclear rocket is not yet a certainty. A few years ago optimists were predicting that a nuclear rocket would be tested in flight as early as 1965. A far more realistic guess now is 1968. If that first flight turns out to be an unqualified success, it still will take at least two years more of intensive test ing before anyone can say the rocket is dependable enough and safe enough to transport human beings on missions deep in hostile space. At the present rate of prog ress, by the time nuclear rockets are proven and avail able the first men should long since have landed on the moon. By that time, however, the United States may have de cided to explore Mars. Boost ers of atomic energy profess certainty that it will be brok en to space harness and ready for the mission. Under Review At the moment, the nuclear rocket development schedule is being reviewed while ex perts study what happened in the most recent firing of a flightless prototype engine at the atomic proving ground in Nevada. Six experimental rocket re actors have been ground-tested so far, and project man agers expect to "consume" 30 to 40 more before a flight test is attempted. When the sev enth firing will take place, however, has not been decid ed. There are those who be lieve atom - powered rocket stages might have become availablc-if only more money and effort had been commit ted - for the Apollo program to land men on the moon be fore 1970. But when the space race be gan, the only rockets avail able either to Russia or the United States were chemical ly fueled. So both countries based their programs so far on the chemical rocket technol ogy, which was a legacy of World War II. Cannot Wait When the United States de cided to make a lunar landing the main space business of the 1960s, officials concluded they could meet the schedule only with chemical rockets. They couldn't wait, they figured, until a brand new atomic rocket technology was perfected. Why should they have to wait? Atomic energy obvious ly is far greater, pound for pound, than that extractable from the best chemical fuels. One pound of fissionable uranium, for example, con tains 10 million times the energy in a pound of gasoline. And the concept of a nuclear reactor is fairly simple. You merely heat a propellant, hy-1 drogen, in a reactor core and ! expel it through a nozzle. i But the atom is by nature ! intractable, and dangerous, i It would take a 10-million-1 pound all-chemical rocket sys tem to send an exploring ! party to Mars. Substitution of ! a nuclear stage would cut the weight to one million pounds. Such a saving in just one ! Mars mission, the experts say, i would more than repay all j Poor Cooking Con Lead To Overweight New York - WB - The man u'h -'izes up his girth and rays -'my wife feeds mc too well'' is in for a surprise. Obesity clinics operated by New York City s health de partment have found that poor cooking can lead to overweight, and good cooking maintains the proper weight level. When the basic meals do not satisfy the natural desire for eating pleasure, the tend ency is to consume highly ca loric sweet treats, the depart ment said. The clinics consider good food preparation so important to proper weight cont-ol that they train mothers of obese children to become belter cooks. The trick, if there is one to weight control, is to cook de licious food that gives com plete flavor satisfaction with every meal and still keep away from every unnecessary caloric. the cost of developing and producing the nuclear rocket. Problems Formidable So why not barge ahead with an all-out crash program to make a nuclear rocket? The engineering difficulties are, as the project managers say, formidable. What's wanted at the outset is a compact re actor generating temperatures at least twice those asked of any ground-based or ocean going atomic plant. What's wanted are fuel core and other materials that can stand temperature ex tremes ranging from about 430 degrees below zero Fahr enheit, the temperature of the liquid hydrogen propellant, to 4,000 to 6.000 degrees above zero, the temperature of the reactor core. What's wanted are rocket parts - valves, bearings, noz zles, control instruments, guidance equipment-that can operate not merely in such temperatures but in the pres ence of radiation levels com parable to those created by an atomic bomb. All these things - the right materials, the right compo nents, the necessary structur al strength - must add up to a rocket that can go from zero to full power in a matter of seconds, shut down and coast a while, and then restart in the near vacuum of space. As one authority said, prac tically everything ever under taken in the space program starts out looking impossible. The nuclear rocket looked even more impossible than some other projects. But the scientists and engineers are not dismayed. They have en countered no difficulties yet which convinced them the job cannot be done. SECTION B PAGES 1 to 8 MEDFORDSiWrRIBUNE MEDFORD. OREGON, THURSDAY. FEBRUARY ' 1963 Books Donated for Overseas Shipment Kansas City, Mo. -HW-Over 7,000 unused books have been donated to People to Peo ple by Maxwell Greffen of Books Abridged, Inc., New York City. The publications will be distributed overseas by the international friend ship organization. The hardback books, which include autobiographies, bi ographies, contemporary nov els, classics and documenta ries, constitute the largest single gift presented People- to-People since is reorganiza tion in November, 1961. The gift resulted from for mer President Dwight D. Eisenhower's article "How You Can Make A Better World" which appeared in a national magazine last summed. Persons working at home constituted 7.2 per cent (4.7 million) of the total work force (64.7 million) of the United States at the time of the 1960 census. More Americans Attend Concerts Than Ball Games Menlo Park, Calif. - (I'PD -The American is not as back ward culturally as he's paint ed by some critics. Arnold Mitchell, Stanford Research institute economist, cites statistics to prove the point. In a recent study, Mitchell reported that twice as many Americans attend concerts and recitals as see major league ball games and that there are more theatergoers than boat ers, skiers, golfers and skin divers combined. Mitchell reported to the In stitute's associate companies that 120 million Americans at tend cultural events annually and as many as 50 million are active amateur artists of one sort of another. "I find it somehow quaint," he said, "that more service men visiting New York go to the Museum of Modern Art than to any other attraction, except the Empire State build ing." Mitchell found the market for "the arts" currently runs around $2.5 billion a year and predicted the trend will cre ate a total arts market of about $7 billion by 1970. Mitchell believes fie urge to express personal creativity is a major factor in the trend toward the "arts" and thinks this urge will increase as a means of attaining both social and personal satirfaction. The trend, he suggested, re flects the U.S. consumer's growing disenchantment with mass-produced goods as status symbols. Individually, Mitchell found the outlay for culture rose by well over 100 per cent be tween 1953 and 1960 - twice as fast as spending on all rec reation. Mitchell estimated that among those 50 million Amer icans who participate in ama teur art activities the ones who play musical insruments arc the most numerous, about 32 million. 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