Comments on: Nuclear-powered aircraft so large other aircraft can land on them in our future?

By: Citi5 Fund

Citi5 Fund — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:25:00 +0000

Joe -

Not for military use… perhaps this explains all the UFO sightings of enormous triangular craft?

By: cake

cake — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:08:00 +0000

Not sure about the design pictured here. That clear windshield bit would create extreme turbulence extending well back behind the carrier, which aircraft would encounter just as they were coming in to land.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:33:00 +0000

If the shuttles going up and down to/from the carrier are VTOLs this could be a game changer. We could do away with big hub airports and have little airports in every town, but each little airport would still be an international airport.

You might also need some carrier to carrier hops using the VTOL shuttles, for example you could start by catching a carrier heading in roughly the right direction, from USA towards Europe then switch to a more country-specific carrier when you reach Europe.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:31:00 +0000

You wrote: “The thought is that an air transport scheme like this could save 40% of the fuel required for a conventional flight on a 1000km route and on a longer 10,000km route; the savings could be as high as 85-90%.”

If you have LENR (cold fusion), why the heck would anyone bother to save 40% of the fuel?!? That’s a few grams of heavy water. Worth a few pennies with cold fusion extraction techniques. Or it is a cup of ordinary water if Rossi is right. Why on earth would you launch these gigantic machines just to save a little water?

There might be other uses for gigantic airborne machines but this is definitely not one of them.

By: Patrick Chua

Patrick Chua — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 08:11:00 +0000

Check the article, even if they don’t want someone to land on it, the concept itself is like a giant floating town that one can just, let’s say, pass by, while parashooting some troops in a blind area. Hi-jacking does not just require a plane to land there.

By: New_man84

New_man84 — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 02:37:00 +0000

Clean reactor technology has come a long way since then, especially now that people are looking at not using weapons grade uranium as fuel.

By: New_man84

New_man84 — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 02:37:00 +0000

Not for military use. Did you even read the article?

By: New_man84

New_man84 — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 02:37:00 +0000

Again, not for military use.

By: New_man84

New_man84 — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 02:31:00 +0000

You would have to land on it to hijack it and can you seriously see them letting planes land on it if they don’t want to?

By: Barrels

Barrels — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:35:00 +0000

So then, all the supposed fuel savings go right out the window when you need a squadron of fighter jets (ie; carrier escorts) on constant patrol around this ship.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:58:00 +0000

The concept reminds me of the UNIT aircraft carrier ‘Valiant’ from Doctor Who.

By: Darkelement

Darkelement — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:06:00 +0000

Companies spend millions and billions to trim off that 40% all the time. Imagine you spend 1 billion a year on fuel costs alone. Now for 2 billion you can cut that by 40% reliably.

That means in 5 years it pays for itself and you start massive savings after that point. I doubt it will cost BILLIONS though, probably in the 100′s of millions.

Also, how are planes supposed to take off from that? Only way I can imagine it working is if they gun it to land and just lift off at air speed from stop. Means that thing would have to be going upwards of 200-300 knots if it wants to cater to commercial airlines without risk of stalling the larger aircraft.

By: Joe Blow

Joe Blow — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:54:00 +0000

This sucker would be so big that it would be cost effective to have antimissile lasers, interceptor missiles, and PHALANX guns on it.

you would have to fire hundreds of missiles to breach its flak barrier. And with that reactor and flight envelope, it could do missions similar to an aircraft carrier, where it goes 10 years between refuel. With that sort of power, you could also have reactive armor and bulkheads (and big armored fuel tanks.

sure you could shoot one down but it require battle of britain levels of airpower.
Tl/DR version:
this thing is more then an airplane, it is a ship and would need to follow naval style, and we know how to protect aircraft carriers on the seas

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:42:00 +0000

Captain Scarlett finally gets his airbase so he can defend the world from the Mysterons

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:35:00 +0000

Airborne Chernobyl.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:32:00 +0000

Like some kind of SHIELD helicarrier…

Btw, i thought both the russians and americans tried nuclear aircrafts back in the day and found them impractical because of shielding issues.

By: Web Design Bangalore

Web Design Bangalore — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:19:00 +0000

Wow Great News

By: Patrick Chua

Patrick Chua — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:18:00 +0000

Regardless, CC Dalton’s view is quite right, it would also be an easy target for Hijacking, sure can’t miss that in the sky.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:09:00 +0000

This isn’t for military applications, it’s for commercial passenger air travel.

By: Cc Dalton

Cc Dalton — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Are you kidding us ?? That’s the biggest target ever for enemy missiles. How could you possibly miss. The crash would probably register on the richter machines…

Save 90 percent of fuel costs but spend billions or trillions to achieve it ?????

Blinder than a bat.