Sep 022011
The SDASM archive has just posted a promotional film describing the “Big Stick.” This was Convairs idea for the Pluto project… a nuclear ramjet cruise missile. Capable of Mach 3 flight at an altitude of 500 feet, it would be virtually impossible to intercept, and would have virtually unlimited range. The YouTube video:
[youtube R1ROFw-36r0]
There is more on the Big Stick, including diagrams, in issue V2N1 of Aerospace Projects Review:
12 Responses to ““The Big Stick””
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Neat, but every time I see nuclear rocket ideas like this there’s one thought I keep comming back to.
If it is supposed to carry a nuclear warhead, wouldn’t all of those neutrons the reactor is throwing off prevent a reliable non-fissle detonation?
The warheads would have been heavily shielded.
Never heard of that particular one before, but their arguments for it make a lot of sense.
Awesome video. I’m not sure I’d have a nuclear ramjet working in the real world, but it’s a cool example of the brute force engineering used 50 years ago.
One of the problems with Project Pluto was what to do with the missile at the end of a test flight, so the reactor wouldn’t contaminate the impact area; they decided they would ditch the thing into a lake.
Better yet, they were looking at deep-sea burial by crashing test SLAMs into the Pacific near Wake and sinking them down to the abyssal plain. There was even consideration of tethered flights — the biggest-ever D-control aircraft — of which one former project engineer quipped, “that would have been some tether.”
http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html
Awesome video, awesome kit! Me want!
I’ve been able to find a fair amount of articles, websites, pictures of the flying crowbar. This is the first animation of it I’ve seen.
Mach 3.5 at an altitude of 1,000 feet … That thing could have done a fair amount of damage just from the sonic boom.
There was discussion of the sonic boom on the SLAM being so loud it could kill you if it went right over you, and could make buildings collapse.
The aerodynamic layout on Big Stick looks sort of like the Rigel test missile:
http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app1/ssm-n-6.html
Is it just me or does it sound like Peter Graves did the narration?
Was this killed because it was nuclear, or because it would be “too provocative” as an effective short warning time weapon?
ICBM’s were cheaper and easier to build. Also they couldn’t figure out a good, and safe, way to do flight tests.