So Mr Putin of the former USSR recently claimed that they were developing a cruise missile type weapon that would be nuclear propelled and therefore have an unlimited(well, greatly increased) flight time.
Now, we all know about the Orion project and then there is nuclear propulsion for spacecraft once they are already up in space. But is it actually possible to have a nuclear fueled rocket that can travel laterally around the surface of the earth making turns on a dime to avoid radar stations and having unlimited range.
Is there anything even slightly feasible that could do this sort of thing. Or is it all just Russian propaganda? If I had to guess I'd say it is pie in the sky propaganda but I thought that Veeky Forums would be the place to ask.
Literally came to this board for the first time to find this thread ....
So lets look at the options...
They are using it for electricity and then in turn using electricity to power an electric propeller (unlikely) or some secret em drive/gyroscopic momentum thruster.
OR
It's a controlled explosion with controllable thrust. This would be super hard to do and you have to be super precise.
Or
Its all BS aimed at our own government dimwits who just may believe it.
Who knows though - from the Caspian sea monster to the battle mole (pic related) the Soviets had crazy research projects.
Hunter Bennett
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto Oh wow would you look at that, it already exists. These weapons are extremely illegal under modern arms treaties and if Russia is actually putting one in production (protip: they are fucking broke) Putin has basically invited NATO to a new Cold War.
Oliver Jones
>illegal No nation follows international law when it comes to arms development. Get real.
Brayden Davis
>Its all BS aimed at our own government dimwits who just may believe it.
What's more believable, Putin is making super missiles capable of global domination, or he's bullshitting his puppet in the white house to make everyone believe he really does. >oh I love what Putin is doing >he said he'd sell us lots of his new missile systems for CHEAP, I got us a GREAT DEAL, have I told you how good I am at deals?
David James
user ... I ...
Mason Robinson
I've never read a more retarded post in my life. It's unbelievable how stupid redditers are.
Matthew Myers
Are you saying Raytheon is a buy?
Oliver Cook
Not him but the BS angle might be the most likely to be true. But instead of Trump asking for money to buy supplies of it he could order an investigation of it which ties up resources on the govt. intelligence's end.
Though if this new missile is indeed true it may be something like an atomic or diamond battery powered drone that behaves like a missile.
Kevin Murphy
It's more likely that he is bullshitting his own people. The world doesnt revolve around the united states. The man has an election to rig in Russia in something like 17 days before he needs to think about the 2018 mid terms over in murrica.
Can you feasibly use an electric motor to power a rocket traveling through the lower atmosphere?, especially if it needs to make directional changes. Controlled explosions would release a fuck tonne of radiation, and be super prone to failure.
Got any better links than a wikipedia article, like why it was canned, and what sort of radioactive side effects we could see from it's operation. Let alone what sort of side effects we could see of the darn thing went haywire, crashed into the hills above the golden gate bridge and led to an evolved species of ape.
Thomas Cook
Very feasible, I don't know the exact mechanism of action, but nuclear powered jets have existed since the 60's. They just pollute like hell so no one wants to use them.
Logan Howard
Russia is a distraction. We need to destroy China and kill 100s of millions of people but no one wants to stomach it.
We'll never build one out of environmental and hippie concerns. And unless there has been noticable background radiation increase from somewhere in russia they haven't tested (or even built) one too.
Jaxon Powell
It was canned because it was obsolete & un-needed The first H-bombs were massive things. Tons. The ICBMs under development couldn't lift one. The US expected, correctly, that the size of the warheads would rapidly shrink. The USSR opted to build bigger rockets -- which gave them an advantage when the Space Race began.
Anyway, the US's interim "solution" was atomic aircraft. Planes which could fly indefinitely couldn't be caught on the ground by a sneak attack by manned bombers. A jet engine needs only heat and that's what reactors are good at making. They actually put a dummy weight (equal to a reactor & shielding) in one of those monster B-36s to see if it could fly. It did, but barely. The reactor was shielded only to the side facing the crew. (And even so, recommendations were made that crews should be composed of pilots past child-bearing age.) Once the reactor had started, the plane could never be approached again, couldn't be serviced until years after a flight.
Pluto, being unmanned, didn't need shielding. It could "loiter" indefinitely outside Soviet airspace and zip in at low-level, beneath radar, when the time came. Finally dawned on someone that it'd be flying low across "friendly" territory before reaching the USSR. Everything within a mile or so of the flight path would just die. (A reactor of about the right power was tested. In Georgia, I think. Everything in the area just dropped dead. All the animals lay there, unchanging, not even decaying because all the bacteria were dead too.)
They never advanced to a flight test. After a few minutes of operation it couldn't be brought back to base (even if it had had landing gear) so the plan was to deliberately crash it into the Pacific.
Full details in one of the books by James Mahaffey.
Nathan Gray
>But is it actually possible to have a nuclear fueled rocket that can travel laterally around the surface of the earth making turns on a dime to avoid radar stations and having unlimited range. Yeah, sure, but why would you bother? Missiles already have basically unlimited range by putting them on submarines which you already have out and about anyway. This is Star Wars tier bullshitting due to the current Russophobia that the media and DNC is hyping. The risks from losing a weapon like this due to foreseeable but unavoidable failure modes are also enormous. You think Chernobyl was bad, imagine a nuclear powered missile giving out and spreading radioactive debris everywhere. I would guess this would be the end of any nation, the sanctions alone would be overwhelming. It's one thing for a "peaceful" power generator to have an accident, another for a MAD suicide trigger to have such an accident.
Thomas Reyes
nuclear rockets and jets are a very old concept, they just never got beyond R&D prototypes because of the inherent danger of having having nuclear reactors flying around in the air
Jeremiah Reed
>And unless there has been noticable background radiation increase from somewhere in russia they haven't tested (or even built) one too. Umm ... user? >Russia in Reversal Confirms Radiation Spike >www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/world/europe/russia-nuclear-cloud.html
Logan Rodriguez
Dig out Project Pluto boys we've got communists to kill.
Nathaniel Richardson
>Who knows though - from the Caspian sea monster to the battle mole (pic related) the Soviets had crazy research projects.
nuclear subterrenes (exposed nuclear reactors that melt rock instead of crush it) > nuclear powered tunnel boring machines
>The idea of a supersonic 200 ton locomotive cruising at treetop level going at three times the speed of sound blasting out radiation as it went by.
yeah I think both sides just saw this and were like, "this is way too crazy" and both sides just mutually agreed "hell no" promptly shelving the project and going back to work on their other doomsday weapons.
Oliver Jackson
The radiological dangers of the misisle's exhaust are overstated. The shockwave from the low altitude mach 3 flight is the larger hazard. Well that and the nuclear bomb it just shit on your head.
The US actually experimented with this in the 60s. It was determined putting an actual reactor on the missile was too dangerous. If anything went wrong with it it would be a massive environmental disaster.
Andrew Cook
>It's more likely that he is bullshitting his own people
This. Anyone who thinks Putin's main audience wasn't the Russian people is an idiot. The man is two weeks away from an election. He's also under fire for being pretty much the only real candidate in a sham election. His political opponents are pushing for a boycott of the election to show how fucked up Russia's political system is. Putin is desperate to drum up voter turnout to legitimize the election.
Putin has also historically run on a platform of being the strongman who stands up to the US and western attempts to take down Russia. Waving his dick around about new missiles feeds right into this.
Anyway the missiles are an irrelevant waste of money. Nuclear combat between two superpowers is contained by mutually assured destruction. That's still the case. The strategic balance of power is unchanged.
It's been understood for some time now that when it comes to nuclear war, an offensive strategy will always beat a defensive strategy simply by overwhelming defense systems. You can shoot down 4 missiles? I'll launch 5. You spent how much on developing a fancy new defense system? I'll spend the same amount on cheap missiles to overwhelm it. Missile defense systems are important for defending against small powers like North Korea. Russia being able to get around US missile defenses doesn't matter. Russia and the US are both in a position to overwhelm each other's defenses.
Adam Nguyen
>how to identify the few people still supporting trump
Juan Jones
Arms Control Wonk seems to think it's real but stupid. Possibly tested in Antarctica?
Samuel Powell
>Nuclear Aircraft Flying Chernobyl ?
Nuclear Kamikazes ?
Matthew Nguyen
>nuclear fueled rocket that can travel laterally around the surface of the earth making turns on a dime to avoid radar stations and having unlimited range.
How will Putin test this weapon?
Gabriel Morgan
How is it different than testing any other weapon?
