nukes – Page 24 – Aerospace Projects Review Blog

1000 Megawatt Fusion Powerplant

Sep 042013

Fusion power has been about 10 years away for the last 50 years or so. Still, experts in the field have from time to time gone ahead and designed operational reactors based on then-current assumptions. One such design study was done in 1972 by staff at the Oak Ridge National Lab, reported on in early 1973. This was a 1000 megawatt commercial fusion powerplant based on the Tokamak torus-type reactor. The work was sponsored by the US Atomic Energy Commission.

A 30,000 gauss superconducting toroidal electromagnet would serve as the deuterium and tritium containment and compression field, driving up pressure and temperature to fusion levels. Neutrons spit out by the reaction would be absorbed by a thick blanket of liquid lithium; absorption of the neutrons would cause the lithium to fission and create tritium at a rate higher than tritium is consumed in fusion, thus making the system self sustaining as far as tritium. While a reactor like this, if made workable, would not have the sort of safety issues associated with fission reactors (see: Chernobyl, Fukushima), there would still be the potential issue of many tons of molten lithium. At the best of time lithium and the oxygen in air do not get along well; melt the lithium and expose it to oxygen – say, via a split weld or a broken pipe – and you’d have one spectacular magnesium-like fire that would probably reduce the entire plant (including the concrete structure) to smoldering ash.

Needless to say, no commercial powerplant like this has been built. One like it is… at least 10 years away.

Ogre

bomber, nukes, rockets, US Bomber Projects No Responses »

Aug 062013

US Bomber Projects issue #5 or #6 will probably include this… a concept for a hovercraft packing an MX missile. Stay tuned!

Make sure to check out USBP #01 and USBP #02 . USBP #03 and #04 are scheduled for September.

US Bomber Projects #02 Available

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Jul 202013

Issue number 2 of US Bomber Projects is now available (for background, see HERE). This issue includes:

Rockwell D 645-1: LH2:: A variant of the low-cost missile carrier using liquid hydrogen for fuel
NAA High Performance Penetrator: a 1963 design for a supersonic bomber, led in part to the B-1
Boeing Model 701-273-1: Second in a series on the evolution of the XB-59
Lockheed GL-232: A subsonic nuclear powered bomber
Boeing Space Sortie: A small unmanned spaceplane
Martin Model 223-2: Second in the series on the development of the XB-48 – a wartime turbojet powered medium bomber
Boeing Model 461: Second in the series on the development of the B-52… an early postwar turboprop heavy bomber
Northrop Low Altitude Penetrator: A competing idea for what became the B-2

USBP#02 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:

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US Bomber Projects #01 Available

bomber, nukes, stealth 1 Response »

Jul 202013

Issue number 1 of US Bomber Projects is now available (for background, see HERE). This issue includes:

Rockwell D 645-1: a 1979 low-cost subsonic missile carrier
NAA 1495-25 PAMSS: an early ’60’s concept for rebuilding an XB-70 into a prototype for an all-new bomber
Boeing Model 701-273-0: First in a series on the evolution of the XB-59 supersonic bomber
Convair B-58-C-1: a two-engined tactical bomber
Lockheed CL-2102-2: A stealthy flying wing
Lockheed Model 195-A-13: An early nuclear powered bomber
Martin Model 223-1: First in a series on the evolution of the XB-48… a wartime turboprop medium bomber
Boeing Model 444 A: First in a series on the development of the B-52… a late war turboprop heavy bomber

USBP#01 can be downloaded as a PDF file for only $4:
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Solid Jupiter

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Jun 152013

Before the Polaris missile was developed, the US Navy studied several approaches to using submarines to launch ballistic missiles. An early idea was taken directly from WWII Germany… store Jupiter IRBMs in special canisters, towed behind subs. These would be partially flooded whe the subs got to the launch site; this would cause the canister to tip up 90 degrees. A few hours later, the liquid fueled Jupiter would be ready to launch. Additionally, there was some thought put into the idea of installing the Jupiter vertically within subs. But nobody much liked the idea of large liquid propellant missiles in submarines. So by April 1956 the idea then moved to solid propellant rockets designed to emulate the Jupiter, carrying the same payload on more or less the same trajectory. The missile would be fatter than the standard Jupiter, but also shorter. Still, at ten feet in diameter and 41 feet in length, it was a very large missile, and only four could be carried within the body of the sub and the greatly extended sail. Fortunately, within a few months the Polaris design came on the scene, a much smaller missile made possible by both a smaller warhead and higher energy density double-base solid propellant.

Lockheed illustration.

Nuclear C-99

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Jun 082013

A 1953 General Electric study for a Convair C-99 cargo plane modified with nuclear turbojet propulsion. The pusher-prop engines were removed from the wing and replaced with a 65,000-pound AC-2 nuclear powerplant within the fuselage. This was equipped with two separate jet engines, giving a total sea level static thrust of 35,500 pounds. Two additional conventionally fueled J77 engines were mounted in the wings for takeoff thrust. A lead and polyethylene shielded crew compartment weighing 20,000 pounds protected the crew, giving radiation doses of 0.5 roentgen per hour.

Military Nova

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May 232013

In the early 1960’s, NASA wanted the Nova rocket: a launch system capable of orbiting around one million pounds. The primary missions included manned lunar and Mars missions, space station launches, that sort of thing. But other missions were contemplated, including military missions. Information on these military missions is pretty lean. This is most likely due to the fact that Nova was a NASA project with minimal DoD input… thus there would have been minimal actual work done on military launch planning for Nova. Nevertheless, a few snippets of military Nova data have come to light from time to time.

A General Dynamics/Astronautics presentation to NASA in August 1963 had a few paragraphs and a few charts discussing military missions. Sadly there was little more; it is impossible to determine if these concepts were actually requested by NASA or not, and whether these ideas went any further. BAMBI (BAllistic Missile Boost Intercept), an anti-missile satellite system, was studied by General Dynamics at the same time as Nova, and has largely remained classified (or at least, little has been made public). Like the anti-missile satellites studied during the SDI program of the 1980’s, for BAMBI to have had a chance of success at taking out a massed Soviet ICBM strike, a large number of the satellites would be needed. In the NOVA presentation, 14 million pounds worth of satellites – each weighing 4,000 pounds – were claimed as needed. In this case, launching 3,500 or so satellites would be a chore that Nova could handle easier than much smaller launch vehicles.

More unconventionally, Nova was also proposed as a logistics transport. In this case, it could be used to chuck a capsule across the planet sub-orbitally… a capsule with 2.5 million pounds of payload. Additionally, Nova could put a 1 million pound capsule into orbit; the capsule would de-orbit itself and land to disgorge infantry. Orbital systems were in a way prefered, as orbital systems meant that the Nova itself would go into orbit. This meant that the Nova could de-orbit on command an return to Earth at convenient locations for recovery; ballistic lobs would essentially throw the Nova away. The orbital capsule was at least illustrated with a drawing.

Finally, Nova could be used to launch offensive weapons. One million pounds were the weights given, so presumably these were meant to go into orbit. The weapons loads were remarkable, and more than a little spooky:

10,000 megatons worth of nukes (speculation: 10,000 one-megaton warheads)
Enough chemical weapons to kill everyone in a 1,000 square mile region
Enough biological weaponry to kill everyone in a 1,000,000 square mile region.

Note… these weapons loads are for a single launch.

Not provide in the presentation – or anywhere else that I’ve seen – is NASAs reaction to the idea of using their rocket to launch a million square miles worth of biological horror.

Nuclear Saturn

launch vehicles, nukes, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Mar 142013

A piece of NASA presentation artwork from 1962 depicting an “Advanced Saturn” (a.k.a. “Saturn C -5” a.k.a. “Saturn V”) with a nuclear third stage instead of the S-IVb stage.

Coaxial Flow Gaseous Nuclear Rocket

nukes, rockets, spacecraft No Responses »

Mar 122013

Conventional nuclear thermal rockets such as the NERVA can have a specific impulse of around 900 seconds, about twice what you can get from conventional chemical rocket engines. That’s good, but it’s also really low compared to what could be obtained from nuclear thermal systems. Solid core NTR’s have core temperatures substantially cooler than what you’d see in, say, an SSME, and for good reason: the core would soften and fail if it got much hotter. Thus the reason for the high performance of NTR’s is not due to high temperature, but to low molecular weight of the propellant (pure hydrogen, rather than water vapor for the SSME). But what if the core wasn’t limited to the low temperature of an NTR?

One way to do that is the gas-core engine. Here the uranium is allowed to not only melt, but to vaporize. It it retrained in the engine, typically, by spinning the engine or at leas the vapor. Thus the dense uranium vapor is spun out to the walls of the engine, and the much lighter hydrogen propellant is in the core. The keep the walls of the engine from melting, the hydrogen is first released into the engine from the walls themselves. The hydrogen bubbles up through the seething uranium gas, taking heat from the uranium as it does so.

Another approach is illustrated below, the Coaxial Flow Gaseous Nuclear Rocket. Here, instead of uranium spun to the walls, vaporized plutonium is retained along the centerline of the engine, with hydrogen flowing around it.

In these cases, specific impulses can get in the range of 5,000 seconds. But the problems with these designs were many. Startup and shutdown would have been lengthy and complicated processes. In the best cases, some of the fissionable gas would have escaped, meaning excess would need to be carried. In the coaxial system, it’s not entirely clear just *how* the hydrogen was to keep the plutonium vapor in place.

Road-mobile nukes

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Mar 072013

In 1963, the Atomics International division of North American Aviation studied a terrestrial modification of the SNAP space-based reactor. The SNAP 4, also known as COmpact Multi-Purpose Automatic Controlled Transportable (COMPACT), had a 1 cubic foot core made of uranium zirconium hydride. The heat generated would boil water, which would drive steam turbine generators. The steam would be condensed and returned to the reactor to be boiled. The closed-loop system would in turn be cooled be either an external water source or via air cooling. Electrical power output was expected to be from 300 to 3,000 kilowatts. The core lifetime was to be from 1 to 5 years, with no maintenance required for 12 months at a stretch. The whole package would fit in an envelope 8 feet in diameter and 30 feet long, ranging from 48 to 125 tons depending on application.

The COMPACT system was meant to be a truck, train, ship, barge or aircraft transportable auxiliary or emergency power supply system (for disaster relief and such), or as primary power supply for remote locations. The claim was made that if put into production, electrical cost from the COMPACT system would be comparable to that from deisel-electric generators.

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