I haven't even posted about this proposed weapon before, because it always sounded so unnecessary, expensive and impractical. (I'm not engineer, but sometimes you hear an idea and think "if that was possible, and useful, it would have been done by now.")The explosion happened on a military missile test range and was carried out by engineers from Russia’s Federal Nuclear Center, under the state atomic agency Rosatom.Putin has touted the missile as having almost “unlimited” range and it is a centerpiece of a new generation of nuclear weapons that he has been saber-rattling at the West in an attempt to look tough at home and force the U.S. to negotiate with him on arms control abroad.The missile is believed to be a ramjet, which propels itself by sucking air in, heating it and pushing it out behind it. To heat the air constantly, the missile would carry essentially a miniature nuclear reactor. Outside experts though are skleptical that Russia is close to getting the missile operational. The U.S. tried to develop similar missiles in the 1960s but abandoned the idea as impracticable.
Everyone has probably heard of US military investigations into nuclear powered aircraft during the Cold War. [That Wikipedia article I just linked to says there was also a proposal for nuclear powered airships too (!).] The thing is, what could really have changed about nuclear fission reactors to now make them attractive for a cruise missile? Is it just that you don't have to worry about shielding a human crew from radiation in a missile?
And I thought the point of normal cruise missiles was that they could skim so low that they were really hard to detect and track, although I guess airborne radar from above, particularly over the ocean, must have a chance.
Anyway, as I say, no expert here, but I wonder if Putin is the victim of believing some crank engineer/scientist's pet project that more sensible people in the field overseas think is impractical and a waste of time.
4 comments:
The ramjet sounds like a terrific system. The people who were working on the Oak Ridge version all knew that their project wasn't going to work. Because you needed an whole lot of lead to shield the crew. If it were a drone jet or a missile clearly you would not need the shielding. Without this requirement a missile system could work well. But since its a ramjet you'd have to carry up to the stratosphere on a normal jet prior to launch.
The thing about Oak Ridge nuclear Jet project is that this is where they came up with the molten salts idea. Which is the way forward for liquid metal batteries, concentrated solar power towers, and modern nuclear power including thorium. More likely an enriched uranium or plutonium/thorium mixture. The thorium like the big logs in a fire, and the other fissile material a bit like kindling. Since you are trying to get the neutron yield up to (lets say for arguments sake) about 2.5 neutrons per reaction.
The cost of the nuclear under a thorium/enriched uranium mixture won't even be so much the cost of the thorium-mixed uranium which could be dirt cheap. Its going to be more in the cost of the containment vessels that the molten salt is corroding.
The Ramjet itself doesn't need to be nuclear tipped. If you know of a big billionaire neocon living outside US territory you might want to bomb his estate with the ramjet, without even any supplementary explosives and the other bigshots could form the decision that peace is the better option.
Australia ought to become a leading expert on molten salts. At first with concentrated solar power towers and then once that expertise is gained we just slide the nuclear reactors into the same energy farms. Beautiful. So beautiful. The wonderment. The job creation. Greening the desert. As much to do with heat applications and upgrading waste organic matter to awesome hydrocarbons as anything else. Not just electricity.
"And I thought the point of normal cruise missiles was that they could skim so low that they were really hard to detect and track, although I guess airborne radar from above, particularly over the ocean, must have a chance."
A ramjet cruise missile could never do that. It could fly around the stratosphere at a fairly fast minimum speed. Then you'd have to probably get it to pick up speed, then curve upwards, get near a maximum height, and eventually accelerate straight down at the target. When it got the thicker air of the troposphere its ramjet engine could not work, but it could come screaming down at the target with such velocity that it could become like one of those super-fast kinetic weapons.
I mean I'm extrapolating here, since I don't know what they have in mind. But thats how I would imagine it. Like you can put up a wall of bullets to try and save the estate. But the kinetic energy might be such that you are pretty doomed no matter what.
Turns out that the Avangard is much better than what I had thought. Its a Scramjet that is launched from an ICBM rocket to get the required speed. Not from a Jet like most Ram/Scramjets. Its made of heat resistant materials so its still going to be able to operate to dodge anti-missile defence when its in the troposphere. At least for a short time. Its supposed to be able to operate at 2000 degrees Celsius. Very nice. But I still think it will be flying high, then coming down at a very steep gradient. You wouldn't want to be heating up too early. Its not like a slow-moving cruise too low on the horizon to be seen, and one that seems to read the street-signs before turning a corner. They have other systems for that sort of thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL2gqBpG48U
Consider if we have successfully developed a energy corridor in the red centre, CSP and nuclear. Hydro-carbon enrichment. High heat industrial applications.
This system would now become very cheap. Launching from an ICBM ... thats all hydrogen and oxygen. In other words have water add energy. The ICBM's could be reused endlessly. They are really just rockets. The carbon fibre materials are just carbon, energy and labour. The molten salts are made of industrial waste and .... salt. Anything highly technical needs a lot of silver but thats not a big deal.
In other words if we adopted this as one of our leading defence priorities we could put the horses head in the bed to any belligerent billionaire trouble-maker anywhere in the world. Stop any war against us before it starts by leaning on the most influential people.
We also need a dual use powerful shipping industry. And we need to twin up thousands of dual use submarines with undersea habitat development to make our sea territories rich with sea life and to justify an unbeatable submarine fleet.
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