I’ve been asked several times if I’ve ever come across a design for or even reference to a manned version of the Project Pluto Supersonic Low Altitude Missile. Short answer: no. However, I’ve come across several nuclear ramjet powered manned aircraft. Not many, as the idea is pretty loopy; a manned aircraft is *almost* by definition meant to be resuable, but there is as yet no such thing as a nuclear ramjet that doesn’t eat itself in relatively short order.
Still, that hasn’t stopped a few aircraft designers from putting forward manned nuclear ramjet vehicles. Such as the one shown below, proposed by Alexander Kartvellie of the Republic Aircraft Corp in the early 1960’s. This monster included solid rocket boosters for a zero-zero launch, two nuclear ramjets, turbojets for a non-nuclear landing and a payload of several rather large weapons. The crew are in the massivley shielded conpartment in the nose.
There will be substantially more on this aircraft if I do write the Project Pluto book I’m hoping to do. Still waiting to hear back from the USAF on some documents. These documents might make the difference between this book project being either:
A} “Project Pluto: The Ultimate Book::
or
B} “Nuclear Powered Flying Death Machines… Pluto, ANP/NEPA/NX-2 and a Little Bit About Project Orion.”
Option “B” is if the documents are a bust. I don;t have quite enough to do a whole book just on Pluto and do it right, but I’ve more than enough on the more general nuclear-military-flying-machine concept.
15 Responses to “Manned SLAM”
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The Pluto SLAM was (purposely?) unshielded so I’d have expected that a manned version would have been different enough as to be unrecognizable from the original.
Actually, SLAM had a fair amount of shielding. Nuclear bombs and electronics are not fans of massive neutron and gamma ray bombardment.
I think we’ve found the poster child for ‘all the aerodynamics of a brick’.
TPS, perhaps – but it’d be one screaming fast brick of nuclear hellfire death!!!!!!!
admin’s comment about shielding makes sense. I may have misconstrued what I had read so long a go:
“In addition to gamma and neutron radiation from the unshielded reactor, Pluto’s nuclear ramjet would spew fission fragments out in its exhaust as it flew by. ” http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html
Still, just because sections are shielded doesn’t mean you’d want to ride in one.
There’s lots of reasons to not want to ride a SLAM:
1) Radiation
2) It’d be damned hot
3) Mach 3 while following the terrain contours at about 300 feet altitude = the worst ride in human history
4) That sudden stop at the end.
So true.
Kartveli certainly thought big.
I like the idea of both titles, as separate books. “Nuclear-Powered Death Machines” is a title that would fit well with the other books on a couple of shelves in my library.
“3) Mach 3 while following the terrain contours at about 300 feet altitude = the worst ride in human history”
Flying that low and at Mach 3…would that kill people on the ground?
> would that kill people on the ground?
Very likely. The sonic booms would be most impressive, and should be adequate to blow out eardrums and bring down structures; the radiant heat given off by the thing could start some fires. The fallout emitted by the reactor would cause a lot of damage, but that would only be noticable later.
>the radiant heat given off by the thing could start some fires.
How much heat are we talking about? And would that heat be from the reactor or would it be from the airframe?
The whole fuselage should be approximately 1000 degrees F, except for a band aroung the reactor, which would be at about 1300 degrees F. The wings would also be about 1000 degrees F. This would be a dark red glow, not the white or yellow-hot glow I thought.
Given the speed, it’s unlikely that the vehicle would leave a trail of fire behind it… it would flash past too fast for most things to absorb enough radiant energy to burst into flames. Additionally, the sonic booms would probably be dangerous, but realistically, it wouldn’t knock most buildings over. Windows and eardrums, though, might have a bit of a problem.
Look at it this way… the amount of energy given off by the vehicle, both radiant heat and sonic boomb, would be less than the total power output of the reactor. And of course that energy would be distributed roughly equally in a circle about the vehicle… half of it going *up.* The maximum power output was about 500 megawatts. So… let’s say it passes at Mach 2.8 over a spot of land 100 meters on a side. Mach 2.8 is about 950 meters per second. It will cross that plot of land in 0.1 seconds. In that time the reactor will put out 50 megajoules. Half goes down, but for a vehicle travelling about 100 meters up, a 100 meter wide “strip” subtends an angle of about 53 degrees… 0.147 of a full circle. So that plot of land will see only 7.36 megajoules. Divide it evenly, and that’s 736 joules per square meter, in a 0.1 second span. It’s about 20 times the power of the sun, for a very brief bit of time. And it’s split up between radiant energy and sound by some ratio I can’t calculate.
Handwaving fiercely, split it evenly between heat and sound. So that’s 3.68 kilowatts/sq. meter of sound power. According to this: http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-soundlevel.htm
that gives 155 decibels.
According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure#Examples_of_sound_pressure_and_sound_pressure_levels
155 decibels is less than having an M1 Garand fired 1 meters from your head (168 db). Unpleasant, but not likely fatal.
However, take all this with a bucket of salt. Acoustics ain’t my schtick.
about the Titel
A} “Project Pluto: The Ultimate Book::
elicits no one to buy
if i talk with people about Pluto SLAM, they don’t know it (bored)
but wen i talk about a almost build DOOMSDAY machine by USA
i have total full attention (thrilled)
so take
B} “Nuclear Powered Flying Death Machines:
you get all attention by buyer market
Just how much ‘fission fragments spewing out in its exhaust’ are we talking? IIRC Coors built rather well and the (admittedly) short run engine ground tests were pretty clean.
Some awful (effects wise anyway) black & white SF flick from the ’50s had an atomic aircraft sent by aliens flying ’round & ’round the world and frying the ground beneath.
I don’t recall if you, Scott, or Jerry Pournelle cited the idea of an “old” Pluto, still flying decades after a nuclear war, worshipped/feared by the survivors. Impossible, of course, given the reactor’s lifetime, but compelling.