If that sounds like science fiction, just consider what nuclear, jet-age 1950 would have looked like to those living in 1915.
Mr. Rumsfeld put in regular work days aboard the "doomsday" nuclear command jet requisitioned for the trip, holding secure video teleconferences to discuss the Abu Ghraib investigations, other issues regarding Iraq and a range of daily Pentagon business.
What may prove harder is convincing the world that the rest of GE which runs from lamps to locomotives via medical scanners, oil-drilling equipment, nuclear reactors, jet engines, water-treatment plants and all manner of other electrical and mechanical gear still deserves to exist.
Within a ten-year period, nuclear bomb, jet aircraft, radar, transistors, intercontinental rockets, guided missiles, synthetic oil produced from coal, mass production of aircraft and tanks, swept wing and flying wing aircraft, stealth submarine technology, plastics industry, synthetic rubber, nylon, and synthetic fiber technologies were developed.
With each nuclear weapon, jet engine, and space rocket we deploy, we venture further into the Orange Zone, heading blindly, if not boldly, toward the point of no return.
Of course we all have favorite technology experiments that we smile about: My favorites are inflatable planes and nuclear-powered jet engines (fortunately, they never got off the ground).
Under the new program, the airplane manufacturer Curtiss-Wright Corporation sought a large isolated area in central Pennsylvania "for the development of nuclear-powered jet engines and to conduct research in nucleonics, metallurgy, ultrasonics, electronics, chemicals and plastics".
It is one of a handful of firms that can build nuclear reactors and jet engines.
They later struggled to describe it — a tornado of fire, a nuclear bomb, a jet engine exploding.
The largest current nuclear fusion experiment, JET, has resulted in fusion power production somewhat larger than the power put into the plasma, maintained for a few seconds.
With three huge investmentscomputers, nuclear power and jet enginesgoing bad simultaneously, many companies might have gone the way of Penn Central or Rolls-Royce.
