Presenting an all-new horror movie: Nuclear Reactors on a
Plane! In the 1950s, when nuclear power
was still full of promise and wonder, there were plans to make a
nuclear-powered aircraft.
In the 1950s, the world was still on the fence regarding
nuclear technology. On the one hand,
nuclear bombs were powerful weapons. On
the other hand, this totally new source of power might be used for nearly
anything.
Even nuclear bombs seemed to have possible civilian
uses. The military was planning
Operation Plowshare, which was meant to test the feasibility of nuclear bombs
in everything from excavating mountains to make room for underground cities, to
moving aside rock formations to make way for roads, to getting water going for
use in hydroelectric power stations. The
Nuclear Age was meant to be more than just an era in military history.
And so, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that, in the
1950s, people started thinking about nuclear-powered planes. Nuclear submarines were already a
reality. Nuclear planes couldn’t be that
far off. Some experts calculated that
the first nuclear planes would be circling the globe by 1963. These would be military planes, but
commercial airlines wouldn’t be far behind.
Either way, the planes would be able to stay aloft for “weeks and
months” at a time and circle the globe “eighty times” in one flight.
This has not been the case.
Either no one was interested in improving on jet fuel, or no one was
aching to put a nuclear in the air where, potentially, anyone might either grab
it or crash it. So, today, we need to
content ourselves with jet fuel and stops in Newark to change planes for
refueling. Ah, what could have been.
Image: Defense Imagery
