41–50 of 71 posts
I wonder if a RTG could produce enough to run an electric quad or optocopter? For certain applications if unmanned you wouldn’t really need to worry about shielding. I wonder how long those motors can run continuously?
I see your GE HTRE-3 and raise you a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon
This was never serious. Technical writing e.g. in textbooks in the 1950s explain that a nuclear-power car is 'not within the bounds of reality'. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003994194&vi...
And with their amazingly powerful (checks notes) 0.13hp engine, you'll have plenty of time to admire the view.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish Toshiba would have actually sold that RTG laptop battery. Imagine never having to charge!
On the other hand, imagine carrying in your bag a heater you can never turn off.
I see your GE HTRE-3 and raise you a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon
This was never serious. Technical writing e.g. in textbooks in the 1950s explain that a nuclear-power car is 'not within the bounds of reality'. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003994194&vi...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was never serious. Technical writing e.g. in textbooks in the 1950s explain that a nuclear-power car is 'not within the bounds of reality'. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003994194&vi...
Today, we have nuclear powered cars on Mars. And with their amazingly powerful (checks notes) 0.13hp engine, you'll have plenty of time to admire the view.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was never serious. Technical writing e.g. in textbooks in the 1950s explain that a nuclear-power car is 'not within the bounds of reality'. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003994194&vi...
Today, we have nuclear powered cars on Mars. And with their amazingly powerful (checks notes) 0.13hp engine, you'll have plenty of time to admire the view.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The correction for cruising height would be insignificant. A ram-jet is an air-breathing engine and would be confined to the atmosphere. Even a 60km cruising height (which is much higher than what would be used) would only correspond to a 1% increase in flight path circumference compared to the surface value of 40.000km.
I think the GP might have meant that Mach 3 at ground level is even more technically astonishing - a lot of the historial benchmarks for airspeed (mach 2 fighters and interceptors, the SR71's mach 3) were only valid at very high altitudes were the atmosphere is sufficiently thin to make the achivement teneable from a drag and heat-flux perspective. To cruise along at Mach 3 at sea level is a quite astonishing display…
They have also tried to use nuclear power for space propulsion. Here is a fun one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion#Medus...
Though the Medusa design is less fleshed out than Orion.
I guess the author gets paid by word count. The piece could have been written in one third of the length.
The piece was definitely written by an AI. And a bad one at that. It is a redundancy nightmare. To save your time: "In 1951, the United States military initiated a program aimed at developing a nuclear-powered aircraft capable of unlimited range (ANP program). The program’s goal was to create a nuclear reactor small enough to fit into an aircraft yet powerful enough to provide the necessary thrust while ensuring the…