One of the great pleasures of my research into the ’60s development of nuclear rockets for space exploration are moments like the following, which I pieced together from archival records and oral history… (If I find enough of these to write, I might collect them into a book sometime. Feedback welcome.)
Richard Nutley, a supply manager for the joint NASA-Atomic Energy Commission Nuclear Rocket Development Station (NRDS), stood with an infuriated NASA accountant next to the partially-constructed Engine Test Stand One. The year is 1961.
The test stand was a maze of pipes connecting two giant, white, spherical hydrogen reservoirs to a towering concrete-and-steel gantry. It appeared much like a lone launch pad in the middle of the sage-covered desert valley where the nation’s most advanced propulsion system was being developed and tested. A network of rail lines crisscrossed the flats, connecting the test stand to several other structures where nuclear rocket reactors were assembled and prepared.
Together, the NRDS represented the nation’s attempts to build a rocket powerful enough to take bases to the Moon and astronauts to Mars, and they were meeting with great success.
Richard grinned, trying not to laugh as the accountant, who’d arrived from NASA headquarters in Washington D.C. that morning, dusted off his suit and attempted to empty gravel from his Italian leather shoes. A mighty dust devil had swept across the construction site without warning, catching the accountant completely unprepared. Already in a sour mood from the unexpected hour-and-a-half drive from Las Vegas to the Nevada Test Site earlier that morning, the whirlwind was the last straw.
Richard shook his head. Anyone who’d bothered to look into the NRDS knew better than to wear nice clothes to the site.
Walking back toward the car parked at the fence-line to the test stand and stifling back laughter, Richard looked up to see that the moon had risen over Vegas, and it loomed on the horizon. “That’s where we’re going with this thing,” he said.
“Where?” the accountant replied, annoyed. “What are you talking about?”
“The moon,” Richard said flatly.
The NASA accountant looked at Richard and said, “You would never see the moon in the daylight back East.”
Richard drove the NASA accountant back to Vegas and never saw him again.
Chronicles of an Atomic Astrowright 