.....; Posted on 08/17/2014 9:23:43 AM PDT by virgil283
"The USS Enterprise, a Navy ship stationed in Virginia, is slowly being taken apart.
According to The Daily Press, the ship's 'inactivation' is being handled in Newport News. The Enterprise was active between 1962 and 2012 - and is 'the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier,' The Press said.A ninth USS Enterprise will eventually be built and may include parts of the eighth ship being disassembled, the newspaper said.
.....;
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
We knew it was scheduled, but it is still sad.
She can’t even have a decent burial/scuttle since the nuclear engines are integrated into her architecture.
RIP and may your upcoming namesake have fair winds and following seas.
ping...
Good point! True too!
A Sad thing, but we all know at some point it would happen. Too bad we can’t take the classified stuff out and make Her a Museum.
“The Press said.A ninth USS Enterprise will eventually be built and may include parts of the eighth ship being disassembled”
Just don’t let J.J. Abrams anywhere near it.
100%
We have nuclear powered aircraft? Who knew?
We have nuclear powered aircraft? Who knew?
Actually I think there was a nuclear aircraft if not actually built it was on the drawing board. Long range bomber I believe.
She’s showing her age in that photo, but still formidable.
Well, we DID develop the aircraft power plants for bombers in the early 50s. I guess if you're going to drop nukes, who cares about the crash of a nuclear-powered aircraft.
Wikipiedia... The US Aircraft Reactor Experiment (ARE) was a 2.5 MW thermal nuclear reactor experiment designed to attain a high power density for use as an engine in a nuclear-powered bomber. It used the molten fluoride salt NaF-ZrF4-UF4 (53-41-6 mol%) as fuel, was moderated by beryllium oxide (BeO), used liquid sodium as a secondary coolant and had a peak temperature of 860 °C. It operated for a 1000-hour cycle in 1954. It was the first molten salt reactor. Work on this project in the US stopped after ICBMs made it obsolete. The designs for its engines can currently be viewed at the EBR-I memorial building at the Idaho National Laboratory.
In 1955, this program produced the successful X-39 engine, two modified General Electric J47s with heat supplied by the Heat Transfer Reactor Experiment-1 (HTRE-1). The first full power test of the HTRE-1 system on nuclear power only took place in January 1956. A total of 5,004 megawatt-hours of operation was completed during the test program. The HTRE-1 was replaced by the HTRE-2 and eventually the HTRE-3 unit powering the two J47s. The HTRE-3 used "a flight-type shield system" and would probably have gone on to power the X-6 had that program been pursued.
President Kennedy changed the course. He wrote "15 years and about $1 billion have been devoted to the attempted development of a nuclear-powered aircraft; but the possibility of achieving a militarily useful aircraft in the foreseeable future is still very remote" in his statement officially ending the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion program on March 26, 1961. 
Convair NB-36H
No need for a museum. The ships are pretty boring to be on.
We have done this with several already.
It does seem to be rather symbolic of the dismantling of the country as a whole, doesn’t it..
McMenamins Bar & Grill could take the boring out & make a really cool pub/grill/brewery/distillary/hotel/theater
“...but still formidable...”
Not to mention beautiful, majestic, powerful and above all, distinctly and beautifully American.
IMHO
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