Can a New Bridge Finally Save the Pentagon's Best Ideas?

From the document: "In May 1953, in the desert west of Idaho Falls, a crew powered up the world’s first naval nuclear propulsion system. What made it possible was daringly aggressive innovation: Adm. Hyman Rickover insisted that the Submarine Thermal Reactor Mark I be built to exactly the specifications that would later be required inside a submarine. This meant hundreds of pounds of simulated sea pressure per square inch, shock resistance tested to the standards of a depth-charge attack, and air conditioning sized at three times the requirement. Rickover’s own engineers fought him, arguing that the basic challenge of building a nuclear reactor at all was hard enough without simultaneously solving submarine problems too. After all, this was one of the first-ever experiments on practical applications of atomic power. Rickover overruled them to demand a realistic operational prototype.

When Mark I reached full power in June 1953, Rickover ordered his engineers to test the system on a simulated transatlantic crossing at full power. The test was unplanned. It was also opposed by his senior officer on site and the technical officers at the Naval Reactors Branch, who called from Washington and urged him to stop. But when Rickover refused and completed the test, which took over 65 hours, he had successfully shown the ability for a nuclear-powered submarine to cross the Atlantic nonstop at full power without surfacing. Rickover faced considerable resistance from Navy leadership, and the pursuit of nuclear propulsion made many career diesel submariners uncomfortable. The proposal had initially sounded, in the words of Rickover’s project officer, “like a trip to the moon” to most who heard it. But when the test was complete, skeptics had nothing left to argue."

Authors - Porteous, Isobel

Subjects

Acquisition

Authors

Porteous, Isobel

Publishers

War on the Rocks

Format

Link - https://warontherocks.com/cogs-of-war/can-a-new-bridge-finally-save-the-pentagons-best-ideas/