Limited by how fast you can transfer the heat without opting for an exposed core, or melting the core, or melting the HP turbine for that matter if it's a turbojet-based nuclear design. You also have the endurance of the airframe and control surfaces at Mach 3 or 5 for long flights (possibly 10,000+km) to consider.
And that's what all of them are.
That could be a problem, but that's not a problem unique to this plane, but every plane that sustains high speeds at high altitudes, like the SR-71, which did a ton of thermal management. You can't rely on mass flow of air to cool yourself at 80k feet, even if you go at Mach 3 - you triple the mass flow, but the air density is less than a tenth of what you have at 10k feet. You need massive radiators, and afaik the SR-71 used fuel as a heatsink, something a nuclear plane won't be able to do.
Your better bet is E-7s with a rack of AMRAAMs on the wings. (E7 fitted with P8 wing)
An exposed core would probably make for faster heat transfer to the working fluid than having to go via a heat exchanger, probably help cool the reactor too but obviously not ideal for testing purposes.
The US did test an open-cycle nuclear ramjet in the 1960s. And Russia has a lot of areas with no people in them to conduct such a test.
So did the US. But there's always a possibility missile will go blue screen and rogue.
And to avoid basing them in Cuba as a never-ending keg-party.
You don't test the nuclear ramjet in the airframe but once, and you use the simplest possible autopilot settings for that "all-up" test.
Then you (and what's worse, hot heads in opfor) are unsure it will work as intended. System must be tested at least from time to time, preferably in something reminicent of actual profile.
Thank you for that!
Because you'd have to deal with getting a fecking huge missile up to supersonic speeds before ramjet lightoff.
So, a nuclear turboprop?
Maybe they did a better job controlling how much core erosion happened?
No. A closed cycle steam (or any other phase change working fluid) turbine. that's driving the shaft, which drives a fan. No propeller (obviously the missile doesnt have a propeller
), and no air turbine, so 0% commonality with a turboprop.The missile has either a ducted fan, an unducted fan, or a propeller.No. A closed cycle steam (or any other phase change working fluid) turbine. that's driving the shaft, which drives a fan. No propeller (obviously the missile doesnt have a propeller
Actually their reasoning was that an indirect cycle engine would be larger and have a different form factor.
I'd be surprised if there are "gigatons" of yield left if you combined all the nukes in the world. This ain't the 60s where you might have gigatons of yield in ONE type of bomb in your inventory.
And now reality: they merely stated that they think it may be open-cycle, but they admit that it's only their speculation based on missile external dimensions. They specifically stated that they did not exclude the possibility.
The vast majority are well under a megaton.
You dont actually need megaton scale warheads to devastate cities you know? higher megaton does not lineraly increase damage. Well places 150kt warheads in MIRVs are more than enough to devastate multiple cities. Hell even 50kT is more than enough to cause generational damage as we saw in in japan. Imagine 14 50KT warheads dropping on your city or even 4.
Well, that's until we got into gigatons range; according to Teller's calculations, the multi-gigaton superbomb, exploded just above the dense atmosphere, would superheat upper atmosphere with intense x-ray radiation, turning it into hot plasma. Sort of flat "pancake fireball", spread over thousand of kilometers - and hot enough to actually cause surface under it to ignite. A continental-scale firestorm, if you like; one bomb capable of incinerating the area, comparable with European nations. And no long-term contamination.
I said it before, but this is the very scenario of Robert Merle 1972 post-apocalyptic novel Malevil. I once used the old version, yield unlimited, of nukemap and found that 10000 Megatons ( = 10 gigatons) would incinerate the entire metropolitan France the way described in the novel: from Dunkirk to the spanish border, from french Brittany to Alsace.
Here's the thing, though: if things ever get to the point of Burevestnik being fired in combat, Burevestnik is already obsolete. If you're at the point that dirty nuclear powered cruise missiles are on the table, the first ICBMs are probably going to be landing by the time you even get these things in the air. And once they're in the air, they so slow and bright that they'll be easy to intercept if the opponent still has any interception capability at all--and if they don't, then congratulations, all you're doing is bouncing rubble (or shattering glass, I guess).
You have no understanding of deterrence, that's obvious. The Burevestnik mere existence make first strike against Russia more and more complicated - less attractive for potential adversaries. It's the very idea of deterrence; making sure, that attack against you would be met with sufficient retaliation for the enemy to not even try.
I do understand how deterrence works, actually, which is why I think this weapon system is patently ridiculous for that purpose. It is neither an effective first-strike weapon, nor a survivable second-strike weapon--two categories that, shockingly, already have perfectly serviceable solutions that various nations actually make and use in a serious fashion because they are actually serious solutions. This? This is a non-serious solution, it is a meme weapon.
