President Kennedy's decision to cancel the development of a nuclear-powered military airplane brought howls of consternation from several airframe, engine and electronics manufacturers. In a terse paragraph in his defense budget message to Congress, the President favored dropping the 15-year-old project because, although $1 billion has been lavished on the program, "the possibility of achieving a militarily useful aircraft in the foreseeable future is still very remote." The U.S., he went on, would have to spend at least another billion "to achieve the first experimental flight." The President proposed to shunt "the...
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