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Re:Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' by noonespecial on Monday October 27, 2008 @04:17PM (#345517)
To put it simply, the heated air is your reaction mass. Push cold air in, heat it so the pressure goes up, blast it out the back through a nozzle.

As mentioned elsewhere already, this is commonly referred to as a "ram-jet". The heat in such an engine usually comes from combustion, but any old heat source will do.

Re:Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' by ars on Monday October 27, 2008 @05:32PM (#345624)
Heating air as reaction mass is far far more complicated then you are making out.

And that's NOT a ram-jet. Part of the thrust in a ram jet comes from the liquid fuel suddenly growing much larger as it's vaporized.

Using air directly would mean heating it to thousands of degrees. Then you need a material that can handle such temperatures (which don't exist), and still contain the nuclear fuel. And at those temperatures your fuel is molten.

When you burn liquid fuel - it burns at a thousand degrees or so, but then expands rapidly (and cools), so you don't actually have to contain anything at that temperature.

But if you heat air you do - and that's not easy.

Oh, and the entire point of ram and scram jets, is to provide oxygen without blowing out the flame (which is why it's so hard to do). That doesn't apply here.

Edit: Read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket and you'll see how hard it is. And they had control of the working fluid, you are proposing plain air.

Re:Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' by noonespecial on Monday October 27, 2008 @08:48PM (#345846)
One good wikipedia citing deserves another. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet

Nuclear powered ramjets

    Main article: Project Pluto
During the Cold War the United States designed and ground-tested a nuclear-powered ramjet called Project Pluto. This system used no combustion - a nuclear reactor heated the air instead. The project was ultimately canceled because ICBMs seemed to serve the purpose better, and because a low-flying missile would have been highly radioactive.
Re:Nuclear-powered passenger aircraft 'to transport millions' by DaniFong on Monday October 27, 2008 @05:59PM (#345671)
If one were to build a nuclear powered airplane, a jet would be quite a bad choice. Propellers would be a much better propulsion system.

Honestly, though, a hydrogen powered plane is a more likely and more physically reasonable system. Hydrogen has a very high specific energy, and energy density isn't nearly as important as weight in a plane.