"To The End Of The Solar System"

Just finished reading "To The End Of The Solar System: the story of the
nuclear rocket", by James A. Dewar. Very interesting book, in two quite
separate ways.

The first, obviously, is that it's a history of the nuclear-rocket
program. More formally, a history of Rover/NERVA, with some commentary on
related efforts. The main narrative is as much about politics as
technology, but there are some very nice all-tech appendixes on things
like advanced concepts. (E.g., the reason why construction of the Dumbo
test engine was cancelled, and no, it wasn't the choice of nozzle.)

Secondly, something I wasn't expecting, it's also a history of the rise,
decline, and fall of the concept of "preeminence" in space -- the idea
that NASA's job was to open up the New Frontier, with Apollo being only
the first small step. Very briefly -- for less than three years, in the
early 60s -- preeminence *was* official policy, and James Webb's NASA was
not merely permitted but firmly encouraged to make detailed plans for Mars
*and beyond*, to seriously ask questions like where the first colony in
the Jovian system should be located or how cooling technology for gas-core
nuclear rockets would affect the cost of bulk freight from Earth to Titan.
It comes up in this book because NERVA was intimately tied up with NASA's
post-Apollo plans. So long as preeminence was the goal, there was no
doubt that nuclear rockets would be needed and soon. When there started
to be serious debate about whether a near-term nuclear-rocket flight test
was needed, it meant that preeminence was dying. So the book ends up
being a history of US space politics in the 1960s and early 1970s too.
(Plus some unexpected side issues, like how the SST died.) All three
presidents of that era end up looking rather different than the popular
beliefs would have it.

Highly recommended.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Thanks for the pointer...

All three
presidents of that era end up looking rather different than the popular
beliefs would have it.

You've obviously fished before -- because you sure know how to set a
hook... :-)

--
Reed

In article ,
Reed Snellenberger wrote:
All three
presidents of that era end up looking rather different than the popular
beliefs would have it.

You've obviously fished before -- because you sure know how to set a
hook... :-)

Okay, from memory -- my copy of the book is out on loan -- a very
quick summary:

JFK got "preeminence" (opening the New Frontier, not just going to the
Moon) started, but backed away from it almost at once. Within a year or
so, Webb was having to remind him that preeminence was his official policy
and was strongly supported by Congress and wasn't consistent with refusing
to fund long-lead preparations for post-Apollo projects. Toward the end,
JFK was actively trying to dump everything but Apollo, and he wasn't even
that enthusiastic about Apollo any more.

LBJ really was pro-space, but although he strongly supported Apollo, he
was willing pretty much from the start to dump most of the rest to keep
the budget in line. One of his first acts as president was a budget
compromise that cancelled plans for a near-term NERVA flight test, thus
essentially conceding that post-Apollo plans would be seriously scaled
back or seriously postponed or both.

And Nixon, despite his evil reputation, seems to have been personally
pro-space. Had his administration been run the way LBJ's was, space might
have come out rather well under him. Trouble was, his administration was
organized *very* differently, with layer after layer of underlings around
him to insulate him from, well, most everything. Like most presidents, he
didn't give space a high priority. With most presidents, that would mean
that little of his time was spent on decisions about space; with Nixon, it
meant that *none* of his time was spent on them. When Webb had a big
fight with the budget people, it ended up in front of LBJ, but when the
equivalent happened under Nixon, it happened two or three layers out from
him, and not only was his opinion not asked, he never even heard about it.
Even powerful and mightily unhappy Senators couldn't reach him.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article ,
Reed Snellenberger wrote:

All three
presidents of that era end up looking rather different than the popular
beliefs would have it.

You've obviously fished before -- because you sure know how to set a
hook... :-)


Okay, from memory -- my copy of the book is out on loan -- a very
quick summary:

snipping an excellent summary of the Presidents' positions...


Thanks, Henry...

I'm a little surprised that Kennedy would have been backing away from
the space program already, but the timing is about right. The Mercury
program had been completed in May '63 and both Gemini & Apollo were
deeply into their "spending money like water without any flights to show
for it" phases, so it's the most probable time for a politician's mind
to ask "Why are we doing this, again?"

--
Reed

Reed Snellenberger wrote:
I'm a little surprised that Kennedy would have been backing away from
the space program already,

It's hard to back away from what one was never really close to.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 05:55:20 GMT, (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

Reed Snellenberger wrote:
I'm a little surprised that Kennedy would have been backing away from
the space program already,

It's hard to back away from what one was never really close to.

....Personally, I believe that had Oswald nailed Jackie instead of
Jack, the White House support for NASA would have seen more intensity.
Based on all the recollections of JFK's visit to the Saturn I site,
and those of his response to the Mercury successes, he was becoming a
rather strong Astrobuff in his own right. Sure, he got into it for the
usual political reasons, but it was becoming apparent that, on a
personal level, he was fast on his way to becoming the type of
supporter the program needs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Which is why I now intend to bug the hell out of the Scottsmen who
released "JFK Reloaded" to produce a patch that allows you to play a
Secret Service agent who gets two shots to blow Oswald away thru the
6th Floor window before he pulls the trigger...

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

....On a side note, D - e-mail me, please. I tried to contact you using
the address listed in your posts, and it bounced.


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Henry Spencer wrote:

(E.g., the reason why construction of the Dumbo
test engine was cancelled, and no, it wasn't the choice of nozzle.)


IIRC, it was the difficulty in getting the extremely small laminar flow
propellant channels cut into the reactant in a consistent and cost
effective form, wasn't it? Analog magazine had a whole article about it
by one of the people who worked on it a couple decades or so ago...he
suggested that the laminar flow channels could be cut to high tolerance
by lasers- which they didn't have the ability to do at the time the
program was canceled.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
(E.g., the reason why construction of the Dumbo
test engine was cancelled, and no, it wasn't the choice of nozzle.)

IIRC, it was the difficulty in getting the extremely small laminar flow
propellant channels cut into the reactant in a consistent and cost
effective form, wasn't it?

Quite so. Getting highly consistent fuel elements was a problem even for
NERVA. The engine's power limit is reached when the *hottest* area is on
the verge of overheating... but its performance is determined by the
*average* temperature. So the wider the spread between average element
and hottest element, the farther the engine falls short of its theoretical
performance. Pushing the performance right up to the theoretical limit
requires very consistent, very reproducible fuel-element properties.

The first attempts to fabricate fuel elements for the molybdenum test
engine (molybdenum being good enough to demonstrate feasibility, and
rather easier to work with than tungsten) showed a spread of properties so
wide that the engine would have had no performance advantage over NERVA.
Cutting very fine cooling passages, and plating very thin layers of
uranium, precisely enough to get good performance at reasonable cost
simply wasn't in the cards.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

(Henry Spencer) wrote:
The engine's power limit is reached when the *hottest* area is on
the verge of overheating... but its performance is determined by the
*average* temperature. So the wider the spread between average element
and hottest element, the farther the engine falls short of its theoretical
performance.

To a first order, that applies to all nuclear reactors.

A nuke once sat down with me and we compared naval reactors to the
(also Rickover designed) Shippingport reactor, and the differences
were significant. (And not just in the obvious areas.)

It's been rumored that Rickover (via his 'second hat' over at the AEC)
quietly steered commercial designs away from some areas in order to
prevent possible public knowledge of certain details and design
methodologies.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL