Why haven’t gigantic nuclear powered planes the size of aircraft carriers that can stay in the sky indefinitely like a nuclear powered submarine been invented yet?
Nuclear powered mothership
Why haven’t gigantic nuclear powered planes the size of aircraft carriers that can stay in the sky indefinitely like a nuclear powered submarine been invented yet?
ICBMs exist.
These could stay in station forever over a target and hit it at need. It would be fricking awesome.
What do you imagine the enemy is doing while this thing is circling over their military bases? Are they just jacking off and taking infinite coffee breaks?
Do you think this is WW1 or something. Genuinely baffled at how your knowledge of military technology seems to have stopped when zepplins were a thing.
>gigantic
>nuclear powered
>planes
You have your answer in your post, anon.
nuclear powered planes have been built and flown using direct fuel-air turbines for propulsion.
OP's overall idea is dumb as a bag of spanners, but the tech part of it is possible.
>nuclear powered planes have been built and flown
And then they weren't built or flown anymore after a tiny bit of testing. Strange. Curious.
Obviosly a plot from Big Jet Fuel to deny the people non-polluting and cheap flight
Or maybe the flight crews got mad because there wasn't enough shielding and the reactor was too big for it to be worth it.
>tech part is possible
A flying fission bomb is not in the scope of the future.
Where would the wastewater drain during prolonged flight?
What happens if it gets struck by lightning?
What’s the protocol for a crash?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik
Still experimental though with a critical accident.
But I strongly suppose they will we be in service in 3-4 years.
There is no way to make a ship armored enough to withstand actual wartime conditions while still being airworthy. Also, consider what happens in the case of semi-catastrophic damage. An aircraft carrier loses all power because, say, its reactors are damaged, but the ship is still seaworthy. If it floats, it can be saved. If a flying base like that ever received equivalent damage, you just blew probably a trillion dollars on some rich morons pipe dream.
nuclear reactors are heavy anon
No they aren't actually but shielding is. And the lightest best ways to do nukes also spew out tons of radioactivity as exhaust which isn't really ideal on Earth lol. It'd be possible to make work, we did do tests on nuclear air breathing strategic bomber focused planes, but it just wasn't worth it.
In theory I could see advancements in lasers maybe making it worth a rethink by a crazy enough country. With unlimited APS able to hit anything coming for 10-15 miles away minimum, more if not directly below, armor wouldn't matter. A stratocarrier would have a lot of advantages along with its risks. Still unlikely to be considered and couldn't do some of the useful roles of regular carriers though would be able to do others. And it'd need nuclear support aircraft as well. A fun thing to brainstorm though, not just the tech but the politics. Like if you actually DO manage to get it over enemy territory, do they even dare to TRY to shoot it down? Then they've got a crashing mil grade nuclear reactor.
Why not invent and improve commercial class electric props? Have the reactor generate power instead. Or steam powered props, even.
>Why not invent and improve commercial class electric props? Have the reactor generate power instead. Or steam powered props, even.
Less efficient, heavier. Even the most perfect conversion of heat to power gets you like 40%. In principle nearly all of the reactor's direct heat can be use to generate thrust with air as the working fluid, and you get cooling along for the ride. An actual design would probably involve a dual loop system just like reactors, with some heavy fluid with high heat capacity and low activation going through the core and then transferring to air. Or shielding that can capture enough neutrons to keep air from getting activated and air then cools that. The challenge is keeping it light enough for the power ratio.
Not that there wouldn't be electricity getting generated as well, and some heat could be usefully directly used for environmental and crew comfort (it's not warm at 50k feet, and hot water would matter over long periods).
But still it's hard vs ocean, water is a much better coolant and also means a nuke boat doesn't have to actually carry much of any water besides a few tanks to meet instant usage, it can desalinate an unlimited amount with its reactor. Though in the category of "interesting to imagine" I wonder if a skycarrier could just fly over to some big rain storms and then through them a bunch of times to replenish water mid air. It'd be so big it'd be unaffected by typical wind surges, and as a bonus the water would all be fresh. When your carrier can go 300-400kn not necessarily a big deal to cruise a couple of hundred miles whenever.
Uranium 1.6 times more dense than Lead
How much uranium is in a reactor vs how much lead is required to seal it up.
>Uranium 1.6 times more dense than Lead
You're terminally fricking moronic if you think this means anything anon.
Shielding unnecessary. Rocket boosters until over enemy territory.
Probably because the cost is tremendous, it's a huge target, and putting a giant reactor in the air screams bad idea.
Because most of the world is ocean already and for everywhere else the US can just have based.
Because submarines are usually hidden,a gigantic plane would just be a target.
There's no doctrinal need and it would be outstandingly expensive without gas flotation. Like, matching the entire output of US nuclear waste every 3 days expensive
Airships only make sense in a world that is composed 60% of landmass. Or maybe if the world was still a super continent.
what do you mean
90% of humanity lives within 20 miles of an ocean coastline. Naval carriers just do it all better, more efficiently.
But the ICBM are located in the interior. so you need something like this to reach them.
Transport via oceans and seas is much cheaper and easier to arrange/maintain. If the world didn't have as much water coverage as it does, there would be much greater incentive to invest into developing huge transport planes that could substitute cargo ships. With the development of those huge cargo planes we would naturally see air cruiseliners show up as well.
Why not just trains?
You know, trains would make a lot more sense. I was just spitballing as the topic was big airships, but in a different take on this world you might see the Breitspurbahn concept come to life. Even with that you might still have the development of big airships but I assume it would really just come down to what kind of resources are easier to obtain for these societies and how the ruggedness of this fictional terrain might affect the costs and risks of running huge trains through it.
there was a show called super train. It was like a train that was like a ruise ship with all cool shit in it. It kinda feel stupid if you think about it. You get on the train travel for 6 hours swim and do stuff in it and get off. I just don't see how it's a cool thing to do
Fixed routes heavily determined by geography and population centers with limited speeds and operating on a strict schedule, the same reason why people use air transport in the real world despite the presence of rail transport.
Imagine a proposal for a multi-billion dollar plane. Now imagine the 10 billion dollar plane that gets built
There's your answer
columbia when
Why not just a blimp if you want something in sky about indefinitely. Would not also a wipe out a small city at it if someone fricks up and crashes it somewhere.
>Billions destroyed by a single manpad.
No one would buy such a piece of shit.
>lases your path
This thing would fly too high for manpads, but certain missiles would certainly frick it's ass. The key would probably be to get really good missile defenses put on it. The bulk of it should probably be missile defense. With something like this you might be able to use UAV's or fighters as some kind of missile defense.
>what are the benefits
Well, it can carry a frick ton of airborne infantry, light armored vehicles, fighters, bombers and UAV's. And you could also probably give it ICBM capability too. That would make it so that no one wants to shoot it down unless it enter their air space.
It would be great as an offensive tool for genuine assaults on enemy territory. Basically like airborne infantry already are, but just about better in every way.
If you land it it should convert into a FOB. It could work but it would be the most expensive thing ever built and you would have to include some lighter than air armored hull pockets to make it actually be able to fly.
It would be a massive engineering challenge and I really think all of NATO would need to work together and contribute a lot to just build ONE that works.
>The bulk of it should probably be missile defense
Two of these should be good. Some sacrificial drones too, maybe.
>that can stay in the sky indefinitely
Airframe stresses said "hi."
Nuclear carriers do not plummet to the earth at terminal velocity if they experience a malfunction or single successful hit from AA systems, taking thousands of lives at once. Nuclear subs do have a risk, albiet a smaller one, of losing all hands due to a malfunction, but they carry a much smaller crew, which the public can more easily stomach if lost.
Basically, there is very little advantage to such a craft, and certainly none that would circumvent the unprecedented costs in R and D and manufacturing or the political/morale cost from losing such a delicate monster. Besides, we can just use drones for ''always airborne'' craft, which makes infinitely more sense.
BECAUSE NUCLEAR POWER NEEDS A CONSTANT SUPPLY OF WATER moron.
Ships and submarines can be nuclear powered because they can intake seawater at will. Aircraft and land vehicles cannot.
If there were ever a case for air-cooling a nuclear reactor, I think 500+ MPH is a good starting place.
That's not actually a sound argument against it. You'll pick up plenty of condensation and cool temperatures cruising where you are
Jesus that's an ugly ass plane. It's like someone took a Hayao Miyazaki plane and made it dumber.
YOU SHUT YOUR prostitute MOUTH
It starts with one very easy question.
How is that thing supposed to take off?
>stay in the sky indefinitely
but has landing gear down
Better question: why can't you make a high altitude air interdiction platform out of an AWACS kitted out with a frickton of long range AA missiles, a CWIS that can travel around the plane on a rail or some shit and serve as missile defense, and maybe some cheap drones to fly cover and carry more missiles? Its radar would outperform every fighter in the air, and it could Macross missile spam to overwhelm enemy fighters from far away.
Just park it over your operational area and enjoy full air superiority.
Maybe someday we'll get an arsenal plane.
I just want to live to see a modernised B-1B come screaming in low over a massive tank battle and unleash a swarm Spear-3s. Even a standard B-1B can carry 340, so imagine a modernised one that has been on a diet with new materials and more modern systems spewing out over 500 of the little frickers.
Explain how that thing takes off in the first place?
why am i keeping a nuclear reactor plane in the air 24/7 when i already do that with jet fuel powered seventy year old bombers
Soon we'll have one from the Southern Divine Gate program
>Estovakia resembles some generic mish-mash of Combloc countries
>fights ruinous civil war
>military dictatorship is installed
>military seeks to reclaim prestige with giant flying supercarrier
Russian Aigaion when?
>yfw one of their Typhoons goes rogue
>yfw it launches nukes at New York
Actually as far as super weapons go the Aigiaon worked pretty well. It won them there civil war and spearheaded the attack on Gracemeria taking the capitol and irc repelled a few counter attacks. Certenly much much better record then Ocea always getting there super weapons hijacked
because real life is not an ace combat title
Because a single f-35 engine produces something close to 100MW of power while a a 100MW nuke reactor weighs 1000 tons. Nuclear reactors + steam turbines have the absolute worst power to weight ratio of almost anything. Their advantage being they need no air and can run for years without refueling.
Anon you fricking moron you don't do fricking steam turbines for an airborne reactor. And a skycarrier or strat bomber doesn't need 100MW instantaneous from the engines like a fighter does. They aren't going supersonic or need to do sudden massive acceleration. Just to repeat for every zoomer in this thread ignorant of history: AIRBORNE NUCLEAR ENGINES WERE ACTUALLY DEVELOPED IRL. The United States experimented with it in the 1950s, and they flew an active 2.5MWth reactor on a modified B-36 Peacemaker to test the shielding.
The concept was abandoned because at those sizes the shielding issue was too hard to solve, the technology wasn't there in ME etc, direct cycle produced too much fallout and indirect cycle wasn't ready, and the perceived need was obviated by the development of ICBMs and nuclear aircraft carriers were fine for everything the US wanted to do, and better in many respects (and again 1950s/1960s material engineering wouldn't let it work well anyway). But it's not because it's some fundamentally impossible concept, and nuclear scales well. It just wasn't actually worth the cost.
And probably still isn't. But it's at least more conceivable now to imagine as a fun thought experiment for something equipped with enough APS to make it more survivable then a sea based carrier.
>wings with holes on the leading edge
>double airfoil, sort of, kinda
>landing gear at altitude
>t-tail restaurant?!?
I wish graphic artists would put at least a minimal amount of effort into these things.
>Giant floating target
>Insanely expensive
>No real function
>Also moronic
Here's the only four reasons that matter.
>aircraft carriers were completely useless from the day they were made -t. nu/k/ anon who is very smart
yeah
Don't drop out of school, anon. Get off PrepHole and enjoy your summer break. You're only 14 once.
Because it would be too heavy just for everything to make the nuclear reactor and generators work.
we have the B52 and the B21 incoming.
Its good to dream
The shielding is really heavy and if one ever crashes you've got a major nuclear disaster.
Also you can't keep anything flying indefinitely because you have to land to perform maintenance and lubrication.
because planes are generally fragile as frick. as massive as this thing is it would be huge, have the radar cross section of a flying football stadium, very slow, very very expensive, and spread nuclear waste where it gets shot down. it would have to fly with basically a whole escort squadron of fighters.
>massive target
>that becomes a massive environmental and political clusterfrick when it gets shot down
>you almost certainly can't afford to get it shot down either
That's before you get to the resupply problem, if you want it to be in the air long term. Resupplying submarines is tricky enough and they're not literally flying through (potentially) hostile airspace
Could air defense take something like that down? Looks like it would take several missiles.