Two Million Kilowattsi

The Bonneville Power Administration, which represents Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams, is used to getting requests for power: its chief business is to sell it. But by this time it hasn't much to spare. Several months ago, a representative of NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) asked for "a block of power." Bonneville inquired how much was wanted.

The answer: "Two million kilowatts."

"Huh?" The Bonneville man scented a misplaced decimal point. "You mean 200,000?" (Even that would be difficult.)

"No, we want two million."

"There isn't that much power anywhere."

The world's biggest single power source at present is Boulder Dam (1,034,800 kw.). The installed capacity of the Consolidated Edison Co., supplying most of Greater New York, is only 2,433,000. To draw off two million kilowatts would slow the wheels of any industrial center in the world. Why did NACA want so much power? It did not tell, publicly. But others could guess: guided missiles.

Wind for the Tunnels. Last week NACA came fairly clean to a TIME correspondent. It was considering the reports of two committees on a projected cluster of gigantic supersonic wind tunnels. To meet the needs of designers, the air would have to blast through the tunnels at fantastic speed. (One.rumor said 3,500 miles an hour.) To simulate conditions in the outer atmosphere, the whole works would have to be cooled nearly to absolute zero (--459.72DEG F.) and the air pressure inside reduced almost to absolute vacuum.

Probably at least one of the tunnels would be big enough to handle a full-sized super-rocket, testing 1) its reactions on its roaring rise through the atmosphere; 2) its flight through empty space, where utter cold makes many metals lose their strength; 3) its meteor plunge to earth, heated perhaps near incandescence by friction with denser air.

The more the committees studied the power requirements, the worse the figures looked. They feared that they would need five, maybe eight, motors of 250,000 horsepower each (biggest existing motor, 87,000 h.p.). These and lesser motors might bring power needs well above two million kilowatts. NACA was nearly stumped. It might have to split up its Buck Rogers testing center. There just wasn't enough available power in any one place to run the fabulous motors.

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