![]() Oscar Wilde once remarked that "Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. In the end, I sucked it up until my first enlistment ended. However even my vapor-locked squid brain realized that life aboard even the very cool and secretive NR-1 probably wouldn't be that great, in addition to sticking me on the east coast for a while. I would have been on board at the time of Challenger Space Shuttle mission. Nothing was said about the conditions aboard the ship or its mission, merely the strict requirements to even apply. I had a pretty high GPA at Nuclear Power School and met the good conduct criteria. I actually considered re-enlisting for a billet on this interesting vessel (mainly to get off the ship I was then serving on). These would have sunk to the ocean floor, and NR-1 was used to recover them, prevent unfriendly states (the Soviet Union) from getting them and reverse engineering them. Īnother public reason the Navy used this ship was to recover advanced aviation electronics and missiles from aircraft lost overboard from aircraft carriers. All personnel that crewed NR-1 were nuclear-trained and specifically screened and interviewed by the Director, Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program. "It was only a matter of whether you were throwing up or not throwing up." NR-1 was generally towed to and from remote mission locations by an accompanying surface tender, which was also capable of conducting research in conjunction with the submarine. Holifield, who commanded the sub in the mid-1970s. "Everybody on NR-1 got sick," said Allison J. The sub was so slow that it was towed to sea by a surface vessel, and so tiny that the crew felt the push and pull of the ocean's currents. ![]() They ate frozen TV dinners, bathed once a week with a bucket of water and burned chlorate candles to produce oxygen. The crew of about 10 men could stay at sea for as long as a month, but had no kitchen or bathing facilities. The NR-1's size limited its crew comforts. NR-1 remained submerged and on station even when heavy weather and rough seas hit the area and forced all other search and recovery ships into port. Because it could remain on the sea floor without resurfacing frequently, NR-1 was a major tool for searching deep waters. Following the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986, NR-1 was used to search for, identify, and recover critical parts of the Challenger craft. Surface vision was provided by a television periscope permanently installed on a fixed mast in her sail area. Its features included extending bottoming wheels, three viewing ports, exterior lighting, television and still cameras for color photographic studies, an object recovery claw, a manipulator that could be fitted with various gripping and cutting tools and a work basket that could be used in conjunction with the manipulator to deposit or recover items in the sea. ![]() ![]() NR-1 performed underwater search and recovery, oceanographic research missions and installation and maintenance of underwater equipment to a depth of almost half a nautical mile. One nuclear reactor, one turbo-alternatorĤ × ducted thrusters (mounted diagonally in two "x-configured" pairs) Most interestingly, she has retractable wheels to scoot along the bottom of the ocean!īox keel depth (below base-line): 1.2 m (3.9 ft) This little ship has manipulators to grab stuff, and a little bay to store it once it has been grabbed. In fact, when you look below the waterline, she's really weird! She clearly isn't intended to go anywhere quickly. Cute, ain't she? You can tell she isn't a warship because of the clutter on her deck. ![]()
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