Vought SLAM / PLUTO

Fantastic news! ;)

Orionblamblam said:
Meh. You can't really make a nuclear powered version of a conventional vehicle without a *lot* of major changes.
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Possibly the reason it was cancelled (that, or the fact Pluto/SLAM was cancelled first)?
 
Just recently posted by the San Diego Air & Space Museum at YouTube - "The Big Stick," a late 50s (?) Convair company film about a nuclear powered cruise missile.

This appears to be Convair's proposal for the Supersonic Low Altitude Missile (SLAM) nuclear ramjet cruise missile program. I was aware of Vought's proposal, but this is the first I have seen/heard of Convair/General Dynamics'.

As per the film, the name "The Big Stick" for the concept came from the Air Research & Development Command studies that lead to SLAM/PLUTO.

Dimensions - 52 ft. long, 13 ft. wide (at the tail fins), 5 ft. in diameter, and an operational weight of 50,000 lbs. (approx.). To be boosted by a Minuteman first stage (58 sec. burn time/178,000 lbs. of thrust), then powered by a 55-inch diameter Marquardt nuclear ramjet. "High temperature steel" airframe, payload approximately 6,400 lbs., either in the form of a singular warhead, or eight (8) ballistically ejected 350 lbs. nuclear "bomblets", guidance provided by INS (est. 1 to 2 NM CEP) and/or TERCOM (est. 1/4 mile CEP), launched from fixed (bunkers/silos) or mobile bases (land train), high-altitude cruise/low-altitude penetration at Mach 3.5 +.

 
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fantastic find
ca it be, this animation was made by Disney ?
they made allot of this work for Companies
 
Nuke engine

Found this Project Pluto entailed the design and testing of a nuclear ramjet engine (shown here) for low-flying, supersonic cruise missiles that could stay aloft for hours. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory designed and built two Tory II-A test reactors (adjacent photo) to demonstrate feasibility. A Tory II-C flight-engine prototype was also built. All six tests of the reactors were successful.
 

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I absolutely love this piece of kit. It only demonstrates how far the US was willing to go to develop more and more elaborate methods of utterly demolishing the Communist threat back in those days. I mean, how much more insane can one get than by using a direct cycle nuclear ramjet that probably would have triggered a meltdown upon crashing once the payload was delivered? :eek:

Thanks for posting that video Boxman. It was quite informative!
 
I wonder how/where training with this weapon would have occurred? Afterall, no one would want this nuclear powered missile flying overhead nor impacting anywhere near them.
 
<shudder>The commentary states initial tests would have been made with chemical fuel. Training with a live reactor sounds *scary*. Nice find.</shudder>
 
Ah much simpler times, "The Communist expansion agenda" so let's build big giant nukes. No whining and apologizing just defending the nation.
 
Lovely promotional desk model of the Pluto missile from Vought Aeronautics.
One of these models was given to every potential Pluto customer.
 

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Any papers on a variant of this modified as a Jupiter or Venus flyer?
 
sferrin said:
Re: Project SLAM

aemann said:
Another idea was to fly it up and down, like mowing the lawn, crushing everything unhardened in it's path.
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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.
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The film was called "The lost missile".
 
Has it been revealed what the warheads would've been carried? I remember reading somewhere years ago that the planned warheads was the W28 in a suitable ballistic-casing.
 
Looks like just another classic fearmongering make believe cold war bogaboo concept to me. Ahh, simpler times...
 
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It has just occurred to me that in July this year it will be the 80th anniversary of the Trinity nuclear-test at Alamogordo and the following August the 80th anniversary of the first and only combat use of nuclear-weapons.
 

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bobbymike said:
How come it’s seems we were doing way cooker stuff 60-70 years ago?
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Back then, not only was it the height of the Cold War, but you had a populace proud of tax-funded technical achievements.

Anyone who called the Saturns a “boondoggle” was met with an icy stare.

The good ‘ole days.
 
publiusr said:
Back then, not only was it the height of the Cold War, but you had a populace proud of tax-funded technical achievements.

Anyone who called the Saturns a “boondoggle” was met with an icy stare.

The good ‘ole days.
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that would be wrong
 
bobbymike said:
How come it’s seems we were doing way cooker stuff 60-70 years ago?
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it was not "cooler" it was consider as necessity to build a weapon system, that put fear in mind of enemy.
SLAM was Deterrence/Retaliatory weapon. more like a Doomsday Weapon...
 
Michel Van said:
back to SLAM was there ever a Soviet version of SLAM ?
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There's also a new Russian one, the Skyfall cruise missile...
en.wikipedia.org

9M730 Burevestnik - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org



NMaude said:
Has it been revealed what the warheads would've been carried? I remember reading somewhere years ago that the planned warheads was the W28 in a suitable ballistic-casing.
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Couldn't have been a W28, those are ~1700lbs not 350lbs.

I'd suspect something more like a W50 (Nike-Zeus and Pershing) or W58 (Polaris A3).

You're not getting megatons out of 350lbs.

Edit: and it may have been me suggesting W28s, as I was under the impression that SLAM was packing megaton-class "submunitions" and said that SLAM et sim would have been huge in order to carry 16x W28s. After all, the W28 is the warhead the AGM-28 Hound Dog missile carries.

Edit2: I may have pulled the idea of SLAM carrying multiple megaton warheads from that Stross short story at:

A Colder War - a novelette by Charles Stross

Roger isn't a soldier. He's not much of a patriot, either. He's just scared when 20 pages of sheer terror land on his CIA desk.
www.infinityplus.co.uk
 
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Michel Van said:
back to SLAM was there ever a Soviet version of SLAM ?
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"In 1955-1957, S.A. Lavochkin's OKB-301 conducted preliminary design work on an experimental nuclear cruise missile (KAR = Krylataya Atomnaya Raketa) with a nuclear ramjet designed by M.M. Bondaryuk. Work on the "375" missile did not progress significantly - the KAR turned out to be huge (other sources say length would be 30 m with 5-6 m diameter). Concept was based on Burya ('350') with axisymmetric intake.
 

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