NEPA Project quarterly progress report, April 1--June 30, 1950

Exploration of various types of power plant cycles for nuclear propelled aircraft has been continued during this quarter. The principal current objective of the project is the development of information which will make an intelligent choice of the basic power plant cycle possible. It is still hoped that this choice can be made late in 1950. The survey studies which have been under way for several months continued during the quarter. These consist of analyses and rough preliminary layouts for various types of aircraft, using each of the several basic cycles which have been seriously considered for each of the three phases of development. Although it is still extremely premature to discuss the relative merits of the various cycles, the information so for developed discloses some cycle differences which may, if confirmed by additional work, be significant. In this respect, there have been no recent major changes in the comparative standings of the cycles