The Story of the Nuclear Powered Bomber

It's hardly forgotten or unknown. You can still see parts of the facility where the US nuclear powered aircraft was being developed at an abandoned Lockheed site in the Dawson Wildlife Management Area in Dawson County, Georgia, near Dawsonville. There are still buildings there, fenced off with chain-link (though easily to get around and through) and still with the nuclear warning symbol painted on the sides of the buildings.

Many thousands of people go there every year to locate the site, and to go horseback riding, hunting, 4-wheeling, hiking, birdwatching, do photography, etc. - even gold prospecting (the first major gold strike in the US in the 1800s was a few miles away). There are geo-cache sites for people into that kind of exploring. It's only a few miles from the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail near Amicalola Falls in Dawson County.

(But if you hear banjo music... )

What could possibly go wrong?

Neat video, solar eagle, but 46 minutes ?

Couldn't you shorten it to 5 minutes and get to the meat of the matter ?

That's a lot of data to use up for a history of air flight.

The mindset of the period is key to the motivation of forced implementation and poor design....Someday this could be the answer to fuel costs....We need to develop a safe design that is not a potential radiation threat....

The Nuclear bomber was not a good idea. If one crashed can you imagine the decontamination efforts to clean up the Plutonium or Uranium contamination?

Remember the B-52 crash in 1966 in Palomares, Spain, which carried 4 Mk-28 Thermonuclear bombs?

Remember the 1961 crash near Goldsboro North Carolina, where 2 of the Thermonuclear weapons nearly exploded on impact with the ground?

Hmmmm, use a Nuclear Bomber in a Kamikaze style nose dive onto some unsuspecting city? Not!!!!

What if there was no radiation danger? ....no weapons grade material?

No radiation danger? What IF the uranium type reactor was breached during a bomber crash. It still would contaminate the area around the crash site.

I doubt that such a reactor wouldn't use weapons grade materials. Most likely the nuclear materials would be quite similar to commercial grade fuel rods.

Even with lead shielding around the nuclear reactor the crew would possibly be exposed to radiation, particularly Gamma and neutron rays.

The idea of a nuclear bomber is not a good one.

With a conventional type reactor, I would agree....

Solar Eagle. When I was a kid, I remember reading stories about nuclear powered rocket ships. What became of that idea ?

There have been many designs, some were abandoned, some are still pursued today....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_propulsion

Some showed promise...but mostly we just use nuclear batteries....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prometheus