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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Atomic Rockets

I was looking for information about nuclear rockets and I came across this photo of a test engine from Project Pluto:


It's from of a set of historical photos from Lawrence Livermore Labs. There are a bunch of other interesting photos there. I sent the link to my gang, and Don wrote back with this story:
My uncle-in-law, Ted Fahrner, was a physicist sequestered at Lawrence Livermore for the Manhatten project. My Dad was an undergrad at Berkeley at the time, doing work-study as a garbage man for the campus. He used to violate the sequestering by sneaking love letters back and forth between my uncle and his sister, taped to the bottom of garbage cans. Makes me proud.
My Uncle Bill worked on nuclear rocket engines in Los Alamos. He introduced me to goat skin gloves, which are really nice for mechanical work because they are so thin, they make it easier to grip small things. They used them at the labs because they were dealing with chunks of graphite that went into the rocket motor. My father worked on the guidance system for the BOMARC anti-aircraft missle, which carried a nuclear warhead.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

THIS IS UBER INSPIRATIONAL! i desire to build a "Lions-Gate" logo type of door. NO KEY, but with moving the proper part (no one but the initiated knew), various gizmos would begin, like a clock,
to operate and open the door.
Well-Done Good and Faithful Brainy-One!
(Send me your templates!)-
Matt's Wife -you know, the guy who invented CAT-TV =^..^=