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From: MJackson.Wbst@Xerox.COM
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Nuclear Powered aircraft?
Message-ID: <11602@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 21 Nov 89 04:20:43 GMT
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From: MJackson.Wbst@Xerox.COM
>From the posting by Roger Cowles, on /Steam Bird/ (fictionalized account of
nuclear powered aircraft program):

> Roll up. If the plane crashes on take off, the reactor, being a 
>  dense piece of kit, will exit from the nose of the plane and roll down
the
>  runway. This rolling action was calculated to be sufficient to compress 
>  the reactor body and core to a critical density, . . .

What!?  Hard to see how rolling would lead to significant, or any,
compression.

> . . .causing a fairly major nuclear explosion.

Getting an implosion-type weapon to work is *hard*; there is no chance that
suitable compression would occur by accident.

> Apparently this was actually a serious proposal for a USAF bomber,
computer
> simulations showed that it would have flown with an effectively unlimited
> range, at around 300 mph.

Bombers need more to say aloft than fuel; maintenance comes to mind.
Anyone know, for example, how long B-52s can be expected to stay airborne
with unlimited in-flight refueling?

Mark