Early last year, President Eisenhower asked the Congress for funds with which to build a fission-powered merchant ship for the global spread of peaceful atomic knowledge. “Visiting the ports of the world,” the President stated, “the ship will demonstrate to people everywhere the peacetime use of atomic energy, harnessed for the improvement of human living.”
In Washington, the basic idea of a floating exhibit of American fission techniques was received with general approval by members of .the Congress. Some of the plan’s technical aspects, however, generated a bit of discussion. To avoid protracted experimental research and thus speed the ship launching date, it was originally decided to fit the vessel with a duplicate of the power plant used in the atomic submarine Nautilus. This notion was greeted with some misgivings. Atomic Energy Committee experts felt that we had already progressed well beyond the Nautilus installation and that a more advanced model was in order. The question before Congress, therefore, has been whether to blow 40 to 50 million dollars on an already obsolete “quickie” or to go slower and get a more advanced sample of our atomic progress sometime around 1959.
Unlike a ship, the dirigible moves in an aerial ocean that completely envelops our globe. Hence, it can display its wares anywhere on the face of the earth. Seas, mountains and deserts present no barrier. Neither, considering its mission of peaceful education, should national frontiers.
A modern dirigible would be unique, the cynosure of eyes. Unlike the ship, one-third of whose bulk is hidden by the water in which it rides, the dirigible discloses every inch of its dramatic size as it coasts along against the clear backdrop of the sky. The lower it flies, the more majestic it appears, as anyone who saw the Akron, Macon or Hindenburg will testify. No man-made vehicle has ever presented such an awe-inspiring spectacle as a giant airship breaking through a low-hanging cloud or cruising above the rooftops of a darkened city.
Its effect upon the peoples of the world would be many times more potent than that of an ordinary-looking, seaborne freighter. The fact that the dirigible, traveling at relatively low speeds and altitudes, a silvery giant by day and dramatically illuminated at night, will be visible to practically everyone en route, makes it the perfect Atoms-For- Peace transport. It can show our flag in every nook and corner of the globe, scattering as it goes messages of good will in every literate dialect.
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images and info provided by the Mechanix Illustrated ARCHIVE from the Zetu Harrys Collection
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