Nuclear powered aircraft

Think helicarrier, but different:



Big enough to carry a rocket and a powerful nuclear reactor, but instead of those quadcopter rotors you see in the picture, it has wings and nuclear powered ramjets. Since it's nuclear powered it doesn't need to combust the air like a normal ramjet or a scramjet. It should be able to produce thrust at very high velocities.

Of course naysayers will complain about the inherent safety issues in a flying nuclear reactor. What if it crashes? Let's not think of the children but instead imagine the possibilities!

power it with a thorium reactor, then its not dangerous at all.

Its not quite like that one of the major reasons that molten salt thorium reactors are inherently much safer than traditional nuclear reactors is because of the way they are designed to fail-safe which is to have and actively frozen plug that in the event of failure, that melts and drips down into a container in such a way to make it sub-critical. When its in a decent concrete bowl it could be considered safe if that same stuff was dripping on you from thousands of metres up in no way would I consider that a safe option even if i took up stroking white cats. And I like a lot of out there ideas, I'd consider a thorium reactor in a space launch vehicle that launched over sea but something designed to hover over inhabited areas for long periods of time I think would be an unacceptable risk.

ok, use a linear radio array and beam power from a terrestrial
power plant?

have it a electric ubber blimp?

if the power fails it slowly dips to the ground?

I think the Japanese have recently tested beamed microwave power for when/if they build a Solar Power Transmitting Space Station but it strikes me that as humans contain a fair bit of water that absorbs microwaves this might have safety hazards as well if it were manned

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next ... 180952145/ ?

"The team shone four lasers in a square arrangement, heating air molecules and creating a low-density ring around a denser core of air. Light bounces around the dense core just like in a fibre.

Using this technique, the researchers could make the careful arrangement of air last long enough to send a signal, explains a statement from the University of Maryland:

Importantly, the “pipe” produced by the filaments lasted for a few milliseconds, a million times longer than the laser pulse itself. For many laser applications, Milchberg says, “milliseconds is infinity.”




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Orion was cancelled; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxMKwxO0oU0

What is this nuclear powered aircraft going to be used for? Will it have a crew, or be unmanned? If it only has ramjets, how do you launch it? The main reason that we have no mobile nuclear power plants is that nuclear energy produces heat, which must be converted into another form to be useful. (I.e. making steam to turn turbines) Also, fission reactors produce dangerous amounts of radiation, and must use heavy screening materials to contain the radiation. Another problem is waste heat, which must be gotten rid of somehow.

We are a long way from developing an energy source which is as potent as fossil fuels. The energy density of petroleum is incredible, and that energy is easily turned into mechanical energy through combustion. The availability of fossil fuels has spoiled our appreciation of the amount of energy required for things like flight, moving heavy loads overland, and generating electricity. Were it not for fossil fuels, we probably would still not have any heavier-than-air aircraft, automobiles, or large ships.

Nothing good I expect. War probably.