Re:Putin’s nuclear torpedo and Project Pluto
by scottlocklin on Monday January 04, 2016 @09:22PM
(#10840557)
1) The sonic booms are from this thing moving at only a few hundred feet overhead. Concorde was also designed with efficiency in mind: sonic booms lower efficiency. I doubt as SLAM was, since it doesn't "burn" fuel. The airframe isn't even area ruled. I doubt it would flatten a modern steel reinforced concrete building without falling on it, but it would certainly break windows and damage some structures.
2) Yes, it was relatively clean with no reactor damage when tested on a stand for 5 minutes. I suspect a few days or weeks of flying at tree level the reactor would physically decay. Breathing uranium/beryllium dust seems unpleasant to me.
3) It was definitely designed to fly at low level at Mach 3 for at least as long as it takes to drop all its bombs. What happens after that is kind of irrelevant, but whatever it is is guaranteed to make a mess. If you stop to think about it; this is inherently a high temperature device. Whatever they were using for electronics and servos would have had to deal with this. It would be interesting to know how some of these subsystems worked for certain.
(1) Doing damage with sonic booms. Not happening. Sonic booms do not cause serious damage. Breaking windows, scaring wildlife, keeping people up. They aren't breaking down doors. Much of our assumptions about sonic booms comes from the anti-Concorde movement that in turn is political. Even at mach3+, this thing is tiny compared to concorde and its wake would not be a weapon. The mythbusters covered this well.
(2) Fallout from the exhaust. The russians actually flew a direct cycle nuclear (ramjet-style) engine, the Tu-95LAL. The pilots died painfully, but it didn't contaminate any large area. The americans ran it on theirs on a test stand for five minutes. How is that test area now? To get the equivalent 5-minutes of overflight this thing would have to do tight laps for years and years.
(3) Flying at Mach3 at low level. Yes it can be done, but not for years or even days. At that speed/altitude the craft is well into the "thermal thicket" where friction and compression heating of the air warms the aircraft. With no fuel to burn (to dump heat) and nowhere cool to radiate, this missile would need some magic cooling system. That highspeed dash can only be a dash, which also impacts (1) and (2) above.