Aerospace Technology

what is the flow of energy to propel the plane?

compressed air as it had been before.

sorry to ask a stupid question but i am not understanding how the atomic plane gets fision to heat to mechanical rotation or thrust to push the plane thuogh the air. i understand the problems and concernes about nuclular leaks etc. thanks......

your ques is not stupid

Principle remains the same as for any jet engine where heated compressed air is to be used as propulsion force. So for engine it does not make a big difference by which particular source of energy the air's been heated and compressed (kerosene or nuke).

You aren't wondering of nuclear power station which consumes the same steam for turbine operating as conventional one worked on coal or gas? Are you? So here's same same :).

I'm sharing your concerns of plausible leakage.

I guess it is possible to protect the nuclear core like they do nuclear bombs from a catastrophic crash, but if you think aircraft are a high value target for terrorism now, what do you think it will be when they have a nuclear payload?

Then again, maybe the whole proposal is Al Qaeda sponsered.

I wonder if they would be able to design it in such a way so that the reactor could be jettisoned automatically if the plane came to grief and just deploy parachutes like the soyuz...?

Take a look over there.

Not sure you'd be able read in Russain to but I hope pics placed there would give you some imagination of that.

TU-95LAL had been equipped by a quite compact reactor which got to safe state (rods out of activation zone) once any flight's trouble could take place. This bird should take off and land by means of conventional fuel (also for safety issues). There had been presumed to parachute reactor in case of inevitable crash for avoiding plausible wide spread contamination.

Project had been closed down by the like reasons as it'd been in the USA.

Yes, I would fly in a nuclear powered aircraft. In fact, I think I would feel safer in a nuclear-powered aircraft than one that is carrying large quantities of highly flammable fluids in tanks serving the dual purpose of fuel storage and lift...

The US had a program to develop nuclear aircraft in the late 40's.

http://www.megazone.org/ANP/tech.shtml

They used a B-36:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36

I think you would have the same problems to overcome today.

Aircraft: No.

Spacecraft: You bet! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)#_note-0

To bad politics & perception killed it. Maybe it's time to revisit the idea.

We'll be teleporting before we fly on atomic planes.

I believe that the idea was a brain f*rt from richard feynman when the US gov't tried to get patents on every conceivable "nuclear" idea from their atomic scientists and thus monopolize the energy source.

I find it interesting to note that he did not get the nobel for that idea, which I believe he called nonsense at the time.

milo

I had read the article previously, and thought it about as practical as the coal-fired SST. This kind of technology could work in space as an ion generator to propel spacecraft long distances, but until the technology of light weight shielding becomes a reality, I don't see how the power-to-weight ratio would justify this as anything more than a proof of concept. Besides, the mere suggestion would have the tree-hugging environmental pantheists flopping around like poster children for birth control.

Jerry-New Hampshire

I thought about this maybe 40 years ago, but what did I know when I was 13.

The biggest issue is with todays planes and the ratio of weight to thrust, there is nothing I can see at the moment other than a thirst busting jet engine that can do the job. As Guest mentioned, (Ion Generator) possible in 20+ more years. As for using Nuclear, I don't see this as a viable solution unless we can develope "warp Drives".

And these quite possibly may not be viable with regards to thrust-to-weight ratios.

I think future planes may use magnetic vector control, the biggest issue would be any solar flares that may impact our upper atmosphere and cause interference, so this puts it back to what we have now. (I believe S3 is working on this now.)

Although I do not see an issue using bio-fuels as a fuel source, it just needs to be able to handle the cold temps. This barrier may be close to being beaten!

9/11 can killed the people inside the building, but your airplane can detory the Newyork city.

Take the pilot out of the picture.... computer control it and because you could super heat air as thermal power is almost unlimited you could vitually have a no moving parts in the engines...hence a plane with no failures ... electronic redunancy to keep it flying... sheiding would not be an issue just scale the plane up from a tube to a massive saucer shape and make it have thrust vectoring so vertical take off landing... and no moving part except for landing structs(no wheels) could even land it on its belly when you think about it !!