This enabled it to survive multiple cancellation attempts that became ever more serious in the cost cutting that prevailed as the Vietnam War escalated and after the space race ended with the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

[4] In 1947, North American Aviation's Aerophysics Laboratory published a large paper surveying many of the problems involved in using nuclear reactors to power airplanes and rockets.

The study was specifically aimed at an aircraft with a range of 16,000 kilometers (10,000 mi) and a payload of 3,600 kilograms (8,000 lb), and covered turbopumps, structure, tankage, aerodynamics and nuclear reactor design.

They became collaborators, and in a series of papers published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society in 1948 and 1949, they outlined the design of a nuclear-powered rocket with a solid-core graphite heat exchanger.

[5][6] In 1953, Robert W. Bussard, a physicist working on the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, wrote a detailed study.

[12] Robert Bussard's study also attracted the attention of John von Neumann, and he formed an ad hoc committee on Nuclear Propulsion of Missiles.

[12] After hearing input on various designs, the Mills committee recommended that development proceed, with the aim of producing a nuclear upper stage for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

However, the nuclear rocket had acquired a powerful political patron in Senator Clinton P. Anderson from New Mexico (where LASL was located), the deputy chairman of the United States Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), who was close to von Neumann, Bradbury and Ulam.

He was answerable to another seconded USAF officer, Colonel Jack L. Armstrong, who was also in charge of Pluto and the Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power (SNAP) projects.

[18] In 1952, the AEC and the National Bureau of Standards had opened a plant near Boulder, Colorado, to produce liquid hydrogen for the thermonuclear weapons program.

This fired fears and imaginations around the world and demonstrated that the Soviet Union had the capability to deliver nuclear weapons over intercontinental distances, and undermined American notions of military, economic and technological superiority.

Test Cell A consisted of a farm of hydrogen gas bottles and a concrete wall 0.91 meters (3 ft) thick to protect the electronic instrumentation from radiation from the reactor.

[21] The reactor maintenance and disassembly building (R-MAD) was in most respects a typical hot cell used by the nuclear industry, with thick concrete walls, lead glass viewing windows, and remote manipulation arms.

[53] When that ended, the workers had to come to grips with the difficulties of dealing with hydrogen, which could leak through microscopic holes too small to permit the passage of other fluids.

It was later discovered that the neutronic power measuring system was incorrectly calibrated, and the engine was actually run at an average of 112.5 MW for 259 seconds, well above its design capacity.

[62] LASL's original objective had been a 10,000 MW nuclear rocket engine capable of launching 11,000 kilograms (25,000 lb) into a 480 kilometers (300 mi) orbit.

The central core was eliminated, the number of coolant holes in each hexagonal fuel element was increased from four to seven, and the graphite reflector was replaced with a 20-centimeter (8 in) thick beryllium one.

On the morning of the test, a leaking valve resulted in a violent hydrogen explosion that blew out the walls of the shed and injured several workers; many suffered ruptured eardrums, and one fractured a heel bone.

Kennedy drew attention to his administration's budgetary difficulties, and his officials and advisors debated the future of Project Rover and the space program in general.

[72] Finger assembled a team of vibration specialists from other NASA centers, and along with staff from LASL, Aerojet and Westinghouse, conducted a series of "cold flow" reactor tests using fuel elements without fissionable material.

Fragments on the test pad were initially collected by a robot, but this was too slow, and men in protective suits were used, picking up pieces with tongs and dropping then into paint cans surrounded by lead and mounted on small-wheeled dollies.

There were concerns that a reactor so small might not achieve criticality, so zirconium hydride (a good moderator) was added, and the thickness of the beryllium reflector was increased to 20 centimeters (8 in).

The PHS had issued film badge dosimeters to people living on the edge of the test area, and took milk samples from dairy farms in the cloud's path.

However, the State Department was very unhappy with LASL's Kiwi-TNT designation, as this implied an explosion, and it made it harder to charge the Soviets with violating the treaty.

Newly elected members of the House looked at Rover and NERVA with a critical eye, seeing it as a gateway to an expensive open-ended post-Apollo deep-space exploration program.

[103] Klein, who had succeeded Finger as head of the SNPO in 1967, faced two hours of questioning on NERVA II before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, which had cut the NASA budget.

There was also the mission to Mars, which Klein diplomatically avoided mentioning,[105] knowing that, even in the wake of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, the idea was unpopular with Congress and the general public.

[117] The proposed rocket was later expanded into a larger design after the project was transferred to the Space Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (SNTP) program at the Air Force Phillips Laboratory in October 1991.

[127] A radiological survey was carried out in 1973 and 1974,[128] followed by a cleanup of severe radioactive contamination at the RMSF, R-MAD, ETS-1, and Test Cells A and C. The E-MAD was still in use, and was not part of the effort.

This involved the removal of toxic and hazardous materials that included asbestos and foil surrounding electrical conduits that contained levels of cadmium above landfill limits.