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Both Rickover and Dr. Hafstad of the AEC have long believed that the U.S. should speed up this development process by financing civilian power reactors to use as proving grounds. Three months ago the AEC made a quick turn-around and decided to build a really big (60.000 kw.) reactor for a land power station. It gave the job to the practiced team of Rickover and Westinghouse.
When the Nautilus is launched, Rickover will be on hand to see it christened. Its sponsor: Mamie Eisenhower. He will probably keep well behind the horde of political and military notables. In Rickover's mind the Nautilus is not perfect; he criticizes it rather than praises it, for that is his way with the things he loves. He knows how it could be made better and how future nuclear submarines will be better. His nimble brain has already run ahead to the day when atomic engines will have proved themselves in submarines and will have multiplied to change the face of the world.
*Exact heading: northwest by J4 north, i.e., 318° true. *The first Nautilus, built by Robert Fulton in 1800, was named after the paper nautilus, a mollusk that was mistakenly thought to cruise the surface of the sea with fleshy sails, and to submerge at will. Most famed Nautilus (named after Fulton's) was the prodigious sea raider commanded by Captain Nemo in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. † Natural uranium from which some of the nonfissionable U-238 has been removed, leaving a larger proportion of fissionable 0-235. *The story of Rickover's campaign to develop the nuclear submarine is told in detail in the book, The Atomic Submarine and Admiral Rickover (Holt; $3.50) by TIME Correspondent Clay Blair Jr., to be published next week.