Engineering & Science

;:;::;;:,~7'"" Engineering & Science Spring 1991 In this issue Magellan at Venus Rocket Scientists Nuclear Power Barrage rockets from Caltech led off every amphibious landing In the World War" Pacific Theater after December 1943. California Institute of Technology Engineering & Science Spring 1991 Volume LlV, Number 3 :2 Caltech's Other Rocket Project: Personal Recollections - by Conway W, Snyder During W orId War II a sizable team of faculty and graduate students dropped their usual research to design, test, and build rockets for the Navy. 14 Magellan: The Geologic Exploration of Venus - by Steve Saunders Venus is nearly Earth's twin, yet its face is a mystery as impenetrable as its thick veil of clouds. Magellan's radar images, of photographic clarity and detail, reveal a volcanic planet at once strange and familiar. 28 The Need for Nuclear Power - by Hans A. Bethe The problems of high cost, safety, and waste disposal must and can be solved to revive an essential source of energy. Departments 36 Letters 37 Obituaries: Carl D. Anderson; Milton S. Plesset; Charles H. Wilts 42 Random Walk On the cover: A 3·D perspective of the precipitous southern rim and boundary Engineering 8< Science (ISSN 0013-7812) is published quarterly, E. Micheal Boughton mountains of a Venu Fall, Wimer, Spring, and Summer, at the California Institute of President of the Alumni Association sian highland called Technology, 1201 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, California Thomas W. Anderson Lakshmi (right hori· 91125. Annual subscription $8.00 domestic; $20.00 foreign air mail; single copies $2.00. Thitd class postage paid at Pasadena, Vice President for Institute Relations zon). The black rib· California. All rights reserved. Reproduction of material contained Robert 1. O'Rourke bons aren't freeways, herein forbidden without authorization. © 1991 Alumni Associa Assistant Vice President for Public Relations but swaths of missing tion, California lostitute of Technology. Published by the Califor data. Such views help nia Institute of Technology and the Alumni Association. Tele scientists interpret phone: 818-356-3630. Postmaster: Send change of address to Magellan's radar Caltech 1-71, Pasadena, CA 91125. data-for .example, PICTURE CREDITS: Cover, inside back cover, 14-17- STAFF: Editor - Jane Dietrich the small dome at left Writer - Douglas Smith NASA, JPL; inside front cover, 2, 9, II, 13 - U.S. Navy; is a volcano unnoticed Copy Editors - Michael Farquhar, in the normal map· 6 - Rex Robbins, Albert James, U.S. Marine Corps; 5, 7, Julie Hakewill, Betsy Woodford view images. An arti 10 - .William Fowler; 17 - Soviet Academy of Sciences; cle describing some Production Artist - Barbara Wirick early results from the 26 - David Senske, James Head; 28, 31, 32, 34 - U.S. Business Manager - Debbie Bradbury mission begins on Council for Energy Awareness; 37 - Leigh Wiener; 39- Circulation Manager - Susan Lee page 14. Janet Jenks Plesset; 43 - Douglas Smith. Photographer - Robert Paz Caltech's Other Rocket Project: Personal Recollections I knew nothing about rockets, by Conway W. Snyder but neither did anyone else on the project in the beginning. Caltech has been identified with American At eight o'clock on the morning of June 1, rocket science ever since its first successful experi 1942, I walked into Willy Fowler's office in ments with liquid-fueled rockets in 1936, which room 203 Kellogg. Most of the research staff of led to the founding of the Jet Propulsion Labora the project-about 15 men at that point-were tory and the launching of the space age. But Cal accustomed to assembling in that place at that tech carried on another rocket project in the early time every weekday to discuss the latest develop 1940s-its contribution to the war effort-which ments. As a new Caltech graduate student I is less well known. Although some of today's air found the discussion completely baffling, because to-air guided missiles may be direct descendants of I did not even understand the technical meaning the first aircraft rockets developed at Caltech, the of the words being used-motor, grain, perfora Institute's war work ended in 1945, allowing its tion, and so on. participants to return to their "real" work. At the end of the session I had not the According to Archivist Judith Goodstein's remotest idea what the project was about, so I forthcoming book on the history of Caltech, asked my office mate who told me they were Millikan's School, the project grew from an initial developing rocket weapons for the Navy. The government contract of $200,000 in 1941-three word "rocket" had not been mentioned in the months before Pearl Harbor-into an "$80 million meeting. I had no idea what an exciting and war industry" before it ended. Rocket design and stimulating time I was to have in the next three production took over all of the Kellogg Radiation years or that most of the rest of my life would At the Naval Ord· nance Test Station at Laboratory and a number of other campus build be involved with rockets. I knew nothing about Inyokern, members of ings (as well as several hundred subcontractors in rockets, but neither did anyone else on the proj Caltech's rocket pro· the Los Angeles area and scattered testing sites), ect in the beginning. ject set up for test· firing Tiny Tim, a large and exploited the talents of a significant fraction The Caltech rocket project was officially aircraft rocket of the Institute's top scientists. According to Wil known as contract OEMsr-418 of Division 3, designed by Tommy liam Fowler (quoted in Goodstein's book), "... the Section L of the National Defense Research Lauritsen. Willy Fowler stands at left. upshot was that a large part of Caltech literally Committee of the Office of Scientific Research It was September became a branch of the Bureau of Ordnance." and Development. NDRC and OSRD were 1944. Conway Snyder joined the project as a grad ' government-funded agencies that had been set student in 1942. On the occasion of Caltech's up in 1940 to suppOrt and coordinate war Centennial, he thought it "appropriate to recall a related scientific research. The chairman of significant episode in its history that began exactly NDRC Division A (Armor and Ordnance) was half a century ago and that has been unheard of Richard C. Tolman, professor of physical chemis or forgotten by almost everyone who was not in try and mathematical physics, and his depury volved in it." Snyder (PhD '48) is now retired was Charles C. Lauritsen (PhD '29), professor fromJPL. of physics. Engineering & Science/Spring 1991 3 Artillery rockets had been used by the British nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose. It looked like 'in 1814, and modern versions had been under plastic-black, shiny, and somewhat soft. It was development in the 1930s by the Germans, the produced in sheets approximately 1 foot by 3 British, and the Russians (who had first used feet by 1/16 inch. The small propellant grains them in combat in 1941), but the American used in the Army rockets were made from the military services had shown little or no interest in sheets by a process called solvent extrusion, them until late 1940, primarily because of their which was not appropriate for larger grains. ' assumed low velocity and vety poor accuracy as Lauritsen had in mind much larger grains, so compared to cannon. In the next few months in the first few weeks of the project, his son put two rocket projectiles were developed by projects a small extrusion press together out of scrounged on the east coast on contracts with the Ordnance parts, mounted it on wheels, hauled it to Eaton Department of the Army. The most successful Canyon north of Pasadena, and attempted to was a tiny rocket dubbed the "Bazooka," which extrude ballistite without a solvent. According depended for its armor-penetrating capability to the project mythology his first product looked on a shaped explosive charge only 2.36 inches rather unpretty, and Tommy thought it might in diameter. Both projectiles were propelled by be improved if he evacuated the air from the propellant grains (single pieces of solid propel extrusion cylinder before applying the pressure. lant) in the shape of cylinders about one inch in It worked, and on November 20, 1941, a good diameter, because these were the largest that grain 15/16 of an inch in diameter and 30 could be made by the process used in the U.S. inches long was extruded. In the next three In the summer of 1941 Lauritsen was sent to weeks, Tommy extruded all the ballistite that England to investigate, among other things, the was readily available into 180 pounds of good In the summer British rocket program. He returned after a cou quality grains, and the first major problem was ple of months with a strong recommendation for solved. Only later did someone realize that, of 1941 Lau an accelerated American rocket program, and he without the vacuum, the adiabatic compression ritsen was sent was authorized to set up a project at Caltech, of air in the chamber could heat it to the primarily for the development of a high-altitude combustion temperature of the ballistite and to England to antiaircraft rocket. In September 1941 he set up cause an explosion. investigate the shop in Kellogg Laboratory and recruited, among Even as Tommy was building his experimen others, his former student William Fowler (PhD tal press, Lacey and Sage were already designing British rocket '36), then associate professor of physics (and now production presses for grains of 1.75- and 2.75- program. He Institute Professor of Physics, Emeritus, and inch diameters, the first step in a project that returned with Nobel laureate); and his son, Thomas Lauritsen would ultimately produce hundreds of thousands (PhD '39), who was always called Tommy, who of grains in various configurations up to a 4.5- a strong recom later also became a professor of physics at Cal inch diameter.

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