It’s October 7th, and in a few moments I’m heading out to the National Archives in Chicago in search of NERVA (the joint NASA-Atomic Energy Commission program to develop nuclear thermal rockets) material and program files. As this is another of my digital time-travel experiment messages, I’m sending this far enough out to encompass a […]
Read More Timestream Post: A Note from 10.7.2010I was inspired by a recent post from SETI’s Dr. Seth Shostak to say something about my own three-year battle against three-dimensionality. As a scientist, I’ve (intentionally) tended to collect reference papers and books into a sort of personal technical library. (I’m not alone here, as Dr. Shostak will attest.) My library includes excerpts, articles, […]
Read More Shredding the LibraryI spent this past Thursday at the National Archives in Chicago as one of the few humans in the last three decades to track down the project files for the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications (NERVA) Program from the 1960s. The experience of using the National Archive was exactly like and completely unlike what I’d […]
Read More Foraging for Nuclear Rocket Secrets
Chronicles of an Atomic Astrowright 