USS Nautilus (SSN-571) USS Nautilus (SSN-571) USS "Nautilus" (SSN-571) was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine and the first submarine to complete a submerged transit of the North Pole on 3 August 1958. Sharing names with Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in Jules Verne's classic 1870 science fiction novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", and named after another that served with distinction in World War II, the new atomic powered "Nautilus" was authorized in 1951, with laying down for construction in 1952 and launched in January 1954, attended by Mamie Eisenhower, First Lady of the United States, wife of 34th President Dwight D.
Cultural influence of Jules Verne elaborate flying machines. Igor Sikorsky often quoted Verne and cited his "Robur the Conqueror" as the inspiration for his invention of the first successful helicopter. The rocketry innovators Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth are all known to have taken their inspiration from Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon". Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders, the astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission, were similarly inspired, with Borman commenting "In a very real sense, Jules Verne is one of the pioneers of the space age". When cosmonaut Georgi Grechko was orbiting Earth with Yuri Romanenko on the "Salyut