The aeronautics enthusiasts have their reactor designed and will begin building it as soon as all the parts arrive. <SNIP>
The Microgravity Flight Team received $30,000 from OSU and other sources, but they'll need about $15,000 more to complete the project. <SNIP> Whittaker-Fiamengo is "incredibly excited" to test the team's reactor on the DC-9.
Obviously, at that price, this is *not* a functioning reactor with fissile fuel -- merely a mechanical model. The real thing would likely cost on the order of a M$
Were they planning on flying a prototype reactor or just an engineering mockup?
It seems to me that no one has ever flown research reactors on Parabolic flights before, obviously because of the danger involved with radiation hazards from the reactor (and the inability to carry much shielding because of weigtht restrictions) and also the potential hazards incurred if a mechanical failure leads to a crash of the aircraft (and the release of radionucleides into the environment.) The only reactor I have ever heard of being 'flown' was the 1 MW experimental GE (or Westinghouse) reactor on the modified Boeing B-36 back in the 1950's as a part of a project to study nuclear powered aircraft. The reactor onboard the B-36 only produced radiation which was used to study shielding methods on the aircraft. All reactor power was dumped overboard as waste heat.
quote: It seems to me that no one has ever flown research reactors on Parabolic flights before, obviously because of the danger involved..... the potential hazards incurred if a mechanical failure leads to a crash of the aircraft (and the release of radionucleides into the environment.) "
A small reactor, operating for only a few minutes, would produce so little radionuclides, that this would NOT pose a hazard following a crash (assuming the fuel is fresh uranium).
The same false reasoning was applied to proposed testing of the PLUTO nuclear ramjet, back in the early sixties : if the reactor were only turned on for a few minutes of flight time (enough to prove operation and thrust generation), then a crash would not have posed a serious hazard. Even a runaway flight could have been easily terminated with timer-set self-destruct charges.
Why is that relevant today ? ....because we might one day want to test small nuke ramjets for exploration of the gas giant planets.
I can imagine a small nuclear turbofan engine that ought to work quite well in Titan's dense, crygogenic nitrogen atmosphere. Such an engine would make possible multiple VTOL's of an atmospheric "Rover." With the combination of low gravity, dense atmosphere, and cold temperatures, then a very compact and efficient machine could be designed. With months or perhaps years of cruising time, such a Titan Flyer ought to be able to image in detail a significant portion of Titan's surface. A flyer could uplink vast amounts of high bandwidth data to a JIMO style vehicle in orbit, which could then relay the data at high bandwidth back to Earth. Such a system ought to return literally tens or even hundreds of Terabytes of data during their lifetimes.
Nuclear ramjets would be an almost perfect platform for a robotic atmospheric 'cruiser' for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Such a machine could fly for months or perhaps years in the atmospheres of these worlds. A fantastic cross section of their dynamic atmospheres could be studied in detail: from the tops of the clouds to some of the darker, hotter regions perhaps. Possibly even sample return could be an option for such a mission.
I can even imagine a time in the future when nuclear powered gas 'miners' could scoop up, extract and refine volatiles from directly from Jupiter's and Saturn's atmospheres. Carbon, deuterium and helium-3 as well as a phenomenal array of hydrocarbines and amines are present in the giant planets' atmospheres.
Infact, I would go as far as to say that when we achieve telescopes with resolutions great enough to characterize spectral signatures from individual planets at interstellar distances, that the detection of gas giant worlds that show anomalously low levels of certain isotopes or chemical compounds could be indirect evidence of resource depletion by an advanced civilization! [Especially if an optical scan revealed other anomolies such as large space structures, or anomolously regular occultations of system's star presumably by a formation or array of artificial structures.]
