The SLAM Missile

[kham]

A little while back , the discussion was about nuclear-powered aircraft; I think I mentioned there was an attempt to make a nuclear-powered cruise missile way back in the day

Well, here it is

The scary thing is that it worked. The sane thing is that someone pointed out the obvious problems

[Duncan Edwards]

Project Pluto, like the NB-36, was largely on engineering exercise just to see if something was even possible. If you want to see something amazing that was intended to produce flight ready hardware you should check out the NERVA project. The goal was to produce a nuclear upper stage for the Saturn V moon rocket. Combining such stages in orbit would have given us the ability to go to Mars and beyond. It was basically a rocket born fission reactor which reached advanced prototype stage by the time the program was halted in 1972. Had it continued for only a few more years we would have had a flight ready nuclear rocket engine. It was one of the amazing engineering efforts that this country used to be capable of as a matter of routine.

http://youtu.be/WoiVej1rccs

[kham]

....
Its all there
A specific Impulse twice that of chemical rockets. This is the propulsion technology that would open up the solar system. And probably now, if you even mention the word nuclear, the green fucktard morons would be screaming frothing lunatics. KGB sure got there fucking money's worth out of funding those cocksuckers, didnt they?

[Mynock]

Had to look it up on Wiki to fully get it. Instead of fuel expanding the air it's just the heat from the reactor doing it. Amazingly simple yet insanely unsafe. Anything within 10 miles of the crash site would be glowing for a thousand years.......ouch.