On Thu, 13 Jun 2002, David Weinshenker wrote:
> reportedly the wind tunnel at Marquart Labs where the one
> actual engine run took place was still radioactive decades
> later...
As far as I know, all the live-fire testing of the experimental engine
(the operational design was never built) was done at the Nevada Test Site,
since it necessarily involved an unshielded reactor. They used a massive
compressed-air tank farm to feed it air at more-or-less ramjet flight
conditions. It did work.
> ...Test runs, as well as
> aborted attacks, were to end by diving the beast into a deep place
> in the ocean. (They'd never be able to get the environmental impact
> papers for _that_ approved these days!)
It wasn't uncommon then. Early plans for RIFT (Reactor In Flight Test,
the first flight of a NERVA engine) specified a suborbital trajectory,
launched by the Saturn I first stage, ending in the Atlantic. (RIFT was
one of the design-driver payloads for the S-I stage, in fact.)
Henry Spencer
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