Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military From: nuchat!steve@uunet.UU.NET (Steve Nuchia) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Nuclear Powered Planes: Feasibility? Message-ID: <11152@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 6 Nov 89 05:03:41 GMT References: <11113@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: Houston Public Access Lines: 49 Approved: military@att.att.com From: nuchat!steve@uunet.UU.NET (Steve Nuchia) >From: "Stephen D. Grant" >it was mentioned that back in the 60's the concept of a nuclear powered >aircraft was on the drawing board. However there seemed to be some problem >with putting a reactor aboard an aircraft. (Something to do with the weight The biggest technical problem was the weight of the shielding. The non-technical problems should be easy to imagine, but I'll mention two: The capital cost of the plane limited the number that could be built, and the Navy had a strong nuclear propulsion recruiting and training program that the AF would have had to compete with for the qualified candidates. The idea was ultimately dropped when in-flight refueling was shown to be tactically feasible. It has the advantage of using one basic system to extend the range and loiter time of all platforms, and of making smoking, as opposed to glowing, holes when something goes wrong. You have to remember that the public and scientific appreciation for the dangers of radiation did not happen all at once. Between the time the idea of a nuclear powered aircraft became marginally practical and the time it was ready to think about deployment our ideas about nuclear power changed radically. The history of in-flight refueling is pretty colorful. An article in one of the early issues of Air&Space described an endurance record effort in the '30s in which the test plane, a Ford tri-motor I think, was refueled by passing a hose from a hole in the floor of another plane and catching it from a hatch in the cabin roof of the Ford. But it wasn't clear that it could be done as a routine component of military missions until fairly recently. Once that was proven the disadvantages of nuclear propulsion left little room for continued development. As a side note, the idea of a nuclear-heated balloon has been floating around in sci.space recently as a possible configuration for exploring the gas giants. One could imagine nuclear propulsion making a comeback in the context of the radar balloons being deployed in the War on Drugs, or perhaps for a flying command post in a worst case nuclear war scenario. -- Steve Nuchia South Coast Computing Services uunet!nuchat!steve POB 270249 Houston, Texas 77277 (713) 964 2462 Consultation & Systems, Support for PD Software.