Tony Hillerman, news editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, was rifling through a stack of press handouts from Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory last week in the hope of finding something worth putting in the paper. One routine announcement noted that William F. Carlson of Bristol, Conn. had been hired for the new "N" Division, which, said the release, "is concerned with research and development of nuclear rocket propulsion."
This was indeed news. The Atomic Energy Commission had never announced that nuclear rockets were possible. Newsman Hillerman checked and provoked an official statement....
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