As if flying weren’t scary enough now we could have giant airplanes full of nuclear power plants that could transport “millions” across the stratosphere.
Actually, this does make a lot of sense. Air travel has been essentially unchanged since the 1950s and any improvement over the fossil fuels currently used is long due. As for safety, ships and submarines have been using nuclear power for years without issue – you so rarely hear about nuclear explosions on the high seas anymore.
Testing with nuclear planes began in the 1950s and is being picked up by scientists in the UK and US. Nuclear is next, friends, as much as we don’t like the idea. It’s cheap, renewable, and multi-faceted, unlike dead dinosaur blood. I, for one, welcome our amazing nuclear flying robotic overlords.
Fergit big nuke-powered airliners. It takes a lot of energy to lift one of those babies. Forget that they shouldn’t physically be able to fly at all in the first place. The only reason we have ginormous Airbuses is that jet fuel is so cheap–oh, and the need to maximize the use of the runways, hubs, loading and unloading infrastructure, etc.
Here’s my solution, which needs only a micro-pile, just a few killowatts/sec: Dude! Where’s my Flying Car!?(tm)
to achieve the utopian dream of cheap individual flying machines, we need universal plug-in nuclear piles. These would be little shielded boxes (okay, maybe not-so little, but smaller than a dorm fridge) of just a few standard sizes: SMB-sized, house size, (flying) car sized. They’re plug-n-play. Easier to change than a car battery. Well, maybe for the home/SMB sizes you need some plumbing, but it isn’t any more complicated than what a typical nerd with a watercooled overclocked gaming rig has. Run it for a few years and then the guys in the hazmat suits (or not, I keep thinking of the ganga-smoking bro in Fifth Element loading up the power tube for the spaceship–classic! …or…prophetic? hmmm?) they show up and swap out the cube for a new one. Easy lease payment plans for pennies on the Kw. Stack the used cubes up in a salt dome in Vegas, or, since they don’t have to meet such a high output criteria as do the big-nuke rods, reallocate the remainder material into smaller and smaller cubes. Nuke-powered laptops anyone? NiPod? Fits right in your (front pants) pocket!
Of course, for these small guys you have to do without the steam turbines for electrical generation, but surely there’s a semiconductor method for direct transfer of emmisive radiation bombardment to DC electricity on a smaller scale. If not, then take a memo: get some VC money on this right away.
Me and my luggage will be waiting for my Flying Car. I’d like to winter in Bora Bora, so get cracking (pun intended).