Thing that surprised me the most (though in hindsight it's obvious) is that the exhaust was completely transparent other than the heat shimmer. No fuel to cause flame or smoke.flateric said:Got Discovery Wings documentary called - yes - Project Pluto. File is quite simle to find on the net, though.
Of 50 minutes of film, SLAM scetchy inboard profile is shown for 10 seconds, BUT there are extensive coverage of Tory reactors fabrication and nuke ramjet tests at Jackass Flats. Awesome stuff.
Skybolt said:
Yes... but you know, photocopying a document... that's *hard.* Years ago, I often paid more than $20 to get a single ten-page document that, in the end, would turn out to be useless.sferrin said:Question I have is didn't we (the tax-payer) already pay for this?
Orionblamblam said:Yes... but you know, photocopying a document... that's *hard.* Years ago, I often paid more than $20 to get a single ten-page document that, in the end, would turn out to be useless.sferrin said:Question I have is didn't we (the tax-payer) already pay for this?
Apparently not. Keep in mind, our taxes are funding the military, and them bastards keep refusing to send me that M-1 Abrams I've requested under the Freedom of Information Act. And $100 bills are printed by the government... using *my* tax dollars! And do they ever let me have any? No!sferrin said:Yeah but it's NASA. Isn't the government (our taxes) paying for them to make that copy?
Pluto would use all of its bombs in the conventional fashion. Afterwards it'd go blitzing around the Russian countryside on a tour at high speed/low altitude. There would be some radioactive damage from that, but the bigger problem would be a white-hot freight train passing overhead at 50 feet while going Mach 3. Shock waves and thermal pluse woudl do a *lot* of damage to soft targets like farms, light building, wooden structures, telephone/power lines, vehicles and people. At the end it would either plow intentionally into some hardened structure target, or just fall out of the sky as systems break down. The reactor would not go "boom," but then you also would want hot uranium reactor elements stopping suddenly and being mixed with white hot vaporized forward vehicle structure. You'd get a fine smoke of uranium oxides that'd cos tthe area and waft downwide. It'd make Chernobyl look like Three Mile Island.sferrin said:Never heard anything about "saving it's last bomb for a suicide crash". What I HAD heard was the idea of flying around spraying radioactive exhaust around until it fell out of the sky but then they found the exhaust wasn't as radioactive as they'd thought. Also the idea was to crash it into a last target but more like a city or area you wanted to deny people the ability to live in since it wouldn't go boom.
no if it fly at Mach 3 at 15 meter high (50 Feet) with white Hot Nuclear Reactor.flateric said:I've heard of projects to use low-altitude reinforced-structure high-speed UAVs (MiG-19 based AFAIR) against our not-so-friendly-then Chinese comrades to kill or panic them in quantities after known border incidents. Tests were to be made on sheeps wearing overcoats. Again, after some calcualtions made of a/c structure stresses and possible sonic boom effectivenes, no one sheep was killed. Grads turned out to be much more effective.
Issue V2N1. Currently (as in within 5 minutes ago) banging away on V1N5. Laptop ground to a halt because the CAD file I was working on got to be just about too big to get crammed into the Word document.Barrington Bond said:Hubba hubba!!
How near future?!?
Sadly, no. The reality of the situation was that the reactor would relatively quickly begin to fall apart. Using *oxygen* as a coolant in a white-hot reactor is always going to be problematic, especially when you also run into smoke, bugs, fog, rain, snow, birds, particulates of all kinds. The longest range I've seen listed for a Pluto vehicle was about 98,000 km, as memory serves.scifibug said:Unlimited...
I saw that movie late one night in the late 60's or early 70's (If I remember correctly). They did nuke it, but it didn't destroy it, just deflected it up away from the earth....sferrin said:There was even a sci-fi movie out back then that had an alien spaceship (I think, it was a while ago) flying 4000 mph round and round the world destroying everything with shock wave and radiation. I remember they showed them firing a pair of Nike Ajaxs that missed and I think they eventually ended up nuking it. As I recall the ship looked like they ripped it off from the 30's Buck Rogers.aemann said:Another idea was to fly it up and down, like mowing the lawn, crushing everything unhardened in it's path.
wicth one you mean the last in right ?Grif said:This is a bit OT, but what is the vehicle in the N1 family line-up in the first link in Flateric's post? It looks like an SF "rocket-ship"!
Grif
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/n1.htmUltimate derivative of N1. Single-stage-to-orbit vehicle based on N1 Block A. Propellants changed to LH2/LOX, 16 x modified NK-33 engines + 4 Liquid Air Cycle Engine Liquid Air/LH2 boosters. All figures estimated based on tank volume of Block A and delivery of 90,000 kg payload to 450 km / 97.5 degree MKBS orbit