Quote:
Originally Posted by MarkJ
They are built for a life and after that expendable like last years toaster.<snip>
Mark
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Mmm...I must differ a little on that. I'll tell you a story about a boat. USS Pargo, (SSN 650). Pargo pioneered the first SCICEX (Science Ice Exercise) as documented in National Geographic, circumnavigated North America via the Arctic, twice, test fired the first Mk 48 torpedos which are still in use on submarines today, held the
record for the greatest number of polar surfacings, etc, etc, etc. The passageways were loaded with plaques and awards from 35 years of firsts.
I hated that boat with a passion reserved for people not inanimate objects. It consumed so many days...years of my life. Kept me from my
family, holidays, a normal life. We hauled her out of the
water at
Puget Sound naval shipyard and I just
knew that the day they pulled the reactor
core out of her, that I'd be dancing on her grave.
Well I didn't dance. They pulled the
core. Once the operation was complete and the
hull was secure again, I went back aboard. I stood in the control room where the buckets that held all of the
instruments stared back at me like empty eye sockets. I stood in the empty
radio room where I'd spent 5 years listening to teletypewrites clatter away, all the knobs I'd twirled and signals I'd tuned, all the ships and planes I'd spoken to. I stood in the reactor compartment tunnel, staring at the sky through a hole that shouldn't exist. No
fuel rods beneath me in the empty core.
Lastly, I stood in the empty Manuvering Room in Engineering (upper level). That room had been inhabited by human beings, non-stop for nearly 35 solid years, from the day the first core was loaded with never a gap. Not for a minute, ever, because the core must be monitored, even when shut down. Do you know how many lives that must have been? So then, I finally understood and I didn't dance. I was pretty sad though.
The
Navy said she was last year's toaster. I disagree.
Maybe the State of 
Linear Mode
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