/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15870441
That one I'm familiar with
What could have been

>>12296790
iirc he's using slam jams

>>12249931
Definitely based. Shooting hydrogen through a reactor to heat it to seriously high temperatures. There was at least a couple proposals for an air breathing version, like Project Pluto, the Fifth Horseman.

>>11123524
COME ON AND SLAM AND WELCOME TO THE pale horse, named Death

>>11003182
Hasn't stopped the US from considering it before...

>>9942227
>>WHAT IF you put half-critical lumps of a fissile material on the tips of a fan blade, and spaced other half-critical lumps around the circumference of the fan shroud.
so you've got weapons grade fissile material on a fan
>>Then, when the fan was spun up, neutron flux in the gap between the lumps
fucking how? If they're subcritical, it's going to be between fuck all an not much
>>heat the air and expel it to power the fan
you need to be a little bit more elaborate how you're going to heat the air and expel it to power a fan
>>lumps can be cooled after each pulse of neutrons
and just how are you generating these pulses of neutrons?
>>WHAT IF
So in the rare event you got this half fleshed out shit post to work, your device would emit copious amounts of fission productions directly into the air. This would be just like the windscale disaster on steroids. Oh and because you're making big giant pulses of neutrons, you've got a tiny neutron bomb going off with every pulse. So everything within about 25 feet of the device is DEAD.

Since you didn't flesh out how exactly you're going to generate neutron pulses or convert heat into rotation of the fan, I'm going to propose a similarly stupid idea. So nuclear powered ramjets have supposedly been generated, wherein thrust is generated via induction and compression of air through forward movement and subsequent heating of said air by moving it through a nuclear reactor. Now ramjets work most efficiently moving at supersonic speeds, now guess what also moves at supersonic speeds? Why the ends of helicopter blades of course! So what we do is simple we put our reactor in the center of a rather large propeller and put ramjets driven by nuclear heat on the blade tips. We provide this heat by ducting air through them into the reactor, then back out, or exchanging heat with them using say helium gas or supercritical CO2. Sure we could just put project pluto ramjets on the blade tips, but that' not doable due to their mass.