Capping an exciting day at the 1989 Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society in San Diego, a special three-hour session on “cold fusion” was held Wednesday evening, April 26, following the plenary lecture by two-time Nobel laureate Prof. Linus Pauling. (See “Linus Pauling Addresses MRS in San Diego” elsewhere in this issue.)

The session, the largest session in MRS history with over 1,700 participants, was sponsored by the Society to provide MRS meeting attendees with an unbiased scientific forum for the presentation and discussion of results and issues regarding recent “cold fusion” announcements in the press. The announcements had captivated the world's interest the preceding month while being met with a healthy amount of scientific skepticism. Such skepticism was not lost on the nation's cartoonists, many of whose works on “cold fusion” were shown during the evening's proceedings.

The special session was organized and moderated by Meeting Cochair Richard W. Siegel, with the help of Angelica M. Stacy and Robin F.C. Farrow (also Meeting Co-chairs) and MRS President R.P.H. Chang. A distinguished panel of invited speakers from the nuclear fusion and materials research communities was assembled to discuss the purported fusion of deuterium nuclei dissolved in palladium or titanium at or near room temperatures.

Lockheed's Research Laboratory was established in 1956 to support the recently founded Lockheed Missiles and Space Division. The earliest products of the division were a new generation of submarine-launched ballistic missile—Polaris and the Agena spacecraft. It was immediately recognized that both required advances in materials technology and the Materials Sciences Directorate was established in the research laboratory to address those needs. Today, materials researchers are conducting investigations in a wide range of topics in metallurgy, chemistry, structures, and nondestructive test/evaluation.

The laboratory has a particularly strong capability in performance analysis and problem identification/resolution for solid rocket propulsion systems. Current work on the Trident II continues the laboratory's contributions to the Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident I missiles. Efforts are also focused on materials for other aerospace applications, such as advanced aircraft, the NASA Space Station (Freedom), and the Strategie Defense Initiative.

Examples of materials sciences achievements include the development of the space shuttle's heat shield tiles, the first use of lithium as an anode in batteries, a real-time x-ray inspection system for large rocket motors, and coated and uncoated refractory metal hot gas manifolds for ballistic missile propulsion. The organization has a staff of about 170 professionals.