We're On Pluto

I have been catching up on the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.science. There was an interesting interchange on Project Pluto.

Now, when some people think of Pluto, they think of the ninth planet (yes! a planet! My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas). More, probably think of Mickey Mouse's dog.

Of course, Pluto is the Greek god of Hades/Death/the Underworld. That is probably the inspiration for this thing:

• 75 foot long; 60,000 pound
• nuclear ramjet, cruise missle bus
• 26 nuclear warheads

The second point needs some explaining.

• ramjet - flies by compressing incoming air, this requires a fair amount of air to work at all - end result - it cannot fly slower than the speed of sound (it would be launched using solid rocket boosters, and could never land)
• nuclear - the incoming air is heated by being directly exposed to an unshielded, operating nuclear plant. This means the exhaust is highly radioactive.
• cruise - designed to fly close to the ground (about 1000 feet)
• missle bus - a missle that carries missles (the 26 warheads)

This thing (designed circa 1960!) would follow terrain using pre-constructed radar maps, shattering glass and damaging walls and roofs as it flew to its target - all the time irradiating everything it flew over. It would then pop out a nuke, which would detonate seconds later (Pluto flies just under one mile per second, so it is already miles away). Once it was out of nukes and losing power, it could be crashed into a secondary target (60,000 pounds at Mach 4, plus highly radioactive).

Magnum 360 said: "Thank you very much thats exactly what I was looking for. Wow thats amazing it had the possiablity of staying up in the air for months, to bad the project was stopped."

To which, Mike Ash says: "Too bad the unshielded and unfiltered airborne nuclear reactor with no ability to land after launch was stopped??!!"

This is pretty incredible work (terrain following using vacuum tubes?). Also, the sheer gall of the thing (spewing out radioactive exhaust). Of course, this was the same age which planned to blast a mountain into space using nuclear bombs!

You have to admire their sense of scale and boldness. Today, we are so safety conscious - we'd never do anything approaching this scale. It seems like there should be some middle ground...