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I don't recall who, but I do vaguely recall somebody building this. It may have been on EMRR or YORF but it might have been on TRF 1 also.
 
I thought I'd posted here on this years ago, but I apparently didn't, as I can't even find it in the archives. Anyway, here's some great stuff on this insane, ahead of its time, terrain following, 500MW nuclear ramjet propelled cruise missile carrying mutliple thermonuclear bombs to be dropped along its way while also, when in low altitude terrain following mode after sufficient flight time, emitting enough gamma rays from its unshielded reactor to give a lethal dose to any unprotected person directly under its flight path (how nice). The TV program where I first learned about it:

PROJECT PLUTO 1 of 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQGBBsLiP6w

PROJECT PLUTO 2 of 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U5SRYejaiA

PROJECT PLUTO 3 of 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBk5r8zy6sQ

PROJECT PLUTO 4 of 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taOyAKpwzMM

PROJECT PLUTO 5 of 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=981JUjIEOvU

original.jpg
 
That thing is scary, I remember talking with someone about this and theorizing the post apocalyptic stories that would be told about a dragon spewing death being passed down. And I do remember seeing it before on TRF
 
I think that thought came from Jack hagerty's Spaceship Handbook. I'm glad this is one bird that has only flown on the sport range!
 
mjennings said:
That thing is scary, I remember talking with someone about this and theorizing the post apocalyptic stories that would be told about a dragon spewing death being passed down. And I do remember seeing it before on TRF
Click to expand...
If you watch the excellent video documentary I linked to above, you'll see that they actually developed and successfully tested the 500MW nuclear ramjet which is what that entire documentary is mostly about. They used a huge array of high pressure pipe to store the compressed air injected into the the full-scale ramjet's intake, first passing that air through large silos filled with large, pre-heated ball bearings to heat the air to the proper flight temperature.
 
This whole thing is a nasty piece of work. Glad it never got built.

(but thanks for the post, very interesting video)
 
cvanc said:
This whole thing is a nasty piece of work. Glad it never got built.

(but thanks for the post, very interesting video)
Click to expand...
Amazingly, even those involved in the program had doubts, wondering "Where in the HELL are we going to test this?" They planned to do a racetrack flight test far out at sea with a destruct system and, if that didn't work, fighters to shoot it down. However, the program was cancelled and what remains is just the fascinating tech of a crazy, nightmarish, end of the world as we know it weapons system.
 
boomtube said:
I vaguely recall this old sci-fi movie from the ‘50s about some rocket or satellite or some-such that was roaring around the Earth emitting radiation and killing everything beneath it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051881/?ref_=fn_al_tt_9

I wonder if the writes had ever heard about “PLUTO”.
Click to expand...
Cool! Even thought it's not reviewed well, I'm going to see if that's available on Netflix. That's exactly the sort of thing that keeps me with the Netflix DVD/Blu-ray rental deal. Check out the Wikipedia entry about it (full of spoilers, of course):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Missile

and this comment within the Wikipedia entry:

"The concept of the atomic-powered cruise missile doomsday weapon was similar to that of the U.S. Air Force's 1957's Project Pluto."

From the Wikipedia entry on Project Pluto:

"On January 1, 1957, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission selected the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) predecessor, the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, to study the feasibility of applying heat from nuclear reactors to ramjet engines. This research became known as "Project Pluto".

I suspect that was plenty enough lead time, assuming that program was publicly announced, for a movie studio to produce a low-budget film released in Dec. '58 that sounds far too much like the hazard of a Project Pluto SLAM to be a coincidence.
 
That's one scary piece of technology. But the entire arms race at that time was pretty scary.

I also remember some scary ideas for the peaceful use of nuclear technology too. I was in high school in the 80's, and I remember one day that our physics teacher must have had some kind of busy work he had to do, so he got out an old film from the 50's or 60's for the class to watch about peaceful uses for nuclear bombs. Hilarious, in a very campy and ironic way in the 80's! But the film was made in all seriousness just a few decades earlier. It was about using hydrogen bombs for things like blasting out a new panama canal. There was an idea for blasting enormous chambers under ground for storing oil, or gas, or water. There was even something about using nukes to blow up hurricanes! Setting aside the radiation issues, I have no idea if that would even work. But the film showed a dramatization with a 50's sci-fi command center staffed by people in shiny jump suits. They were tracking a developing storm that was threatening the east coast, and after the storm passed a certain threshold of danger, the decision was made to deploy the nukes, and a bomber was dispatched to save the day! Thanks, peaceful atom!
 
While the concept of “Blowing-up” a hurricane using a nuclear bomb would probably work and assuming some means was developed to mitigate the fallout; that still leaves us with what the heck happens to the Earth’s climate when its natural form of air-conditioning is disrupted.

Hurricanes are all about heat transfer and if hurricanes are stopped that heat has to go somewhere, somehow.

And yes; I saw that same cheesy film telling us we would all soon have electricity that was too cheap to meter.
 
While on the subject of cheesy sci-fi movies that dealt with missiles and rockets; does anybody remember the title of a movie wherein this “friendly alien”, which looks like a human brain, arrives on Earth and gathers a bunch of kids to help it stop humanity from launching a rocket called the “Thunderer” If I recall correctly, that was a nuclear armed orbital bomb platform?

And if the plot sounds a bit like the Star Trek episode “Assignment Earth” and if perhaps Gene Rodenberry had perhaps borrowed it, I wondered that myself.
 
boomtube said:
I vaguely recall this old sci-fi movie from the ‘50s about some rocket or satellite or some-such that was roaring around the Earth emitting radiation and killing everything beneath it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051881/?ref_=fn_al_tt_9

I wonder if the writes had ever heard about “PLUTO”.
Click to expand...
Bless YouTube! The entire movie is there which I will be watching later:

[video=youtube;01ZN7CZkmeg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01ZN7CZkmeg[/video]
 
boomtube said:
While on the subject of cheesy sci-fi movies that dealt with missiles and rockets; does anybody remember the title of a movie wherein this “friendly alien”, which looks like a human brain, arrives on Earth and gathers a bunch of kids to help it stop humanity from launching a rocket called the “Thunderer” If I recall correctly, that was a nuclear armed orbital bomb platform?

And if the plot sounds a bit like the Star Trek episode “Assignment Earth” and if perhaps Gene Rodenberry had perhaps borrowed it, I wondered that myself.
Click to expand...
No, but if you find it, please post its name here. I love old, not well known sci-fi movies.

Seen any of these?

Fiend Without a Face! (1958) - Full Movie (Brains with spinal chords, attack you and suck your brain out)

[video=youtube;6M-MtZkZOzw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M-MtZkZOzw[/video]

X The Unknown (1956) ORIGINAL THEATRICAL TRAILER (Highly radioactive blob)

[video=youtube;krz8ym_TdSs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krz8ym_TdSs[/video]

Kronos (1957) Full Movie (Cool, giant robot from space)

[video=youtube;M0QpVgfx4PI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0QpVgfx4PI[/video]

The Day of the Triffids ** 1962 Full Movie (Plants attack)

[video=youtube;FLP0-lowEPA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLP0-lowEPA][/video]
 
boomtube said:
I’ve seen them all.

Not sure what that says about me.
Click to expand...
Possibly the same thing it says about me and the imaginary cast of the Big Bang Theory. I'm not a genius, but my recreational pursuits and hobbies involve the mind and the imagination... not physical sports, for instance, which I couldn't give a rat's arse about in any way and never have.

I was recently in a sports bar/restaurant specializing in chicken wings just to check out why their parking lot was always so packed at lunchtime. I figured it was the food. It was OK, but that wasn't it. The waitress asked me which booth I'd like to sit in to watch the sport I preferred. I asked her sardonically on which screen they were showing The Science Channel...
 
ThirstyBarbarian said:
That's one scary piece of technology. But the entire arms race at that time was pretty scary.

I also remember some scary ideas for the peaceful use of nuclear technology too. I was in high school in the 80's, and I remember one day that our physics teacher must have had some kind of busy work he had to do, so he got out an old film from the 50's or 60's for the class to watch about peaceful uses for nuclear bombs. Hilarious, in a very campy and ironic way in the 80's! But the film was made in all seriousness just a few decades earlier. It was about using hydrogen bombs for things like blasting out a new panama canal. There was an idea for blasting enormous chambers under ground for storing oil, or gas, or water. There was even something about using nukes to blow up hurricanes! Setting aside the radiation issues, I have no idea if that would even work. But the film showed a dramatization with a 50's sci-fi command center staffed by people in shiny jump suits. They were tracking a developing storm that was threatening the east coast, and after the storm passed a certain threshold of danger, the decision was made to deploy the nukes, and a bomber was dispatched to save the day! Thanks, peaceful atom!
Click to expand...

Operation Plowshare... there were several discussions about it in "Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie" (which I HIGHLY recommend) and in some of Peter Kuran's other works on the subject, such as "Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero" which highlights a number of nuclear sites around the US, many of which you can visit on road trips or at certain times of the year, including the Trinity Site, and the only US detonation of a nuclear device east of the Mississippi River, in rural Missississippi. It has a pretty good description of the Plowshare Program, including some video from film presentation about it... pretty interesting stuff...

Part of the Plowshare Program was oil and gas well stimulation... They drilled a well into hard impermeable gas-bearing shale in NW New Mexico and SW Colorado around Rifle, Colorado. These formations had copious amounts of hydrocarbons embedded in them, but the impermeability of the shale rock underground prevented economical extraction using 50's and 60's technology (and with the gas and oil prices of the time.) They drilled a well, then lowered some low to medium yield (kiloton range) nuclear devices down the borehole to the bottom of the well... then they detonated them. The nuclear blast vaporized a large cavity in the rock a few dozen yards wide, and deeply fracture the hard shale out into the formation well away from the cavity itself, which then allowed the gas to flow through the resulting cracks into the chamber and then up the borehole to the wellhead at the surface. The idea worked, but the problem was, the gas was too radioactive to distribute commercially... they capped the wells and that was that (after three separate tries in the same general area of New Mexico and Colorado. Today those formations are being drilled and tapped like wildfire and are producing like gangbusters, thanks to fracking technology being used to break up the rock and fracture it in the same way, sans the nuclear devices...

The Sedan Crater out on the Nevada Test Site was a specific test done under Plowshare to demonstrate using nuclear charges for blasting out channels for canals and for blasting through mountain passes to build highways or railroads... I've seen footage of the Soviet equivalent of Plowshare (which was actually a sort of "joint" program with the Russians, in that both sides agreed to pursue the research within specific limitations and guidelines). The Russian test was done on some taiga (swampy marshy land) in Siberia IIRC, they detonated three devices simultaneously to demonstrate digging out canals, waterways, or reservoirs using nuclear devices...

Basically, as you pointed out, the disadvantages due to radiation outweighed any advantages of it... and of course the costs were not inconsequential either, compared to standard bulldozer/digging/blasting technologies. Plowshare work was dropped after a few years.

Later! OL JR :)
 
Winston said:
No, but if you find it, please post its name here. I love old, not well known sci-fi movies.

Seen any of these?

Fiend Without a Face! (1958) - Full Movie (Brains with spinal chords, attack you and suck your brain out)

[video=youtube;6M-MtZkZOzw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M-MtZkZOzw[/video]

X The Unknown (1956) ORIGINAL THEATRICAL TRAILER (Highly radioactive blob)

[video=youtube;krz8ym_TdSs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krz8ym_TdSs[/video]

Kronos (1957) Full Movie (Cool, giant robot from space)

[video=youtube;M0QpVgfx4PI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0QpVgfx4PI[/video]

The Day of the Triffids ** 1962 Full Movie (Plants attack)

[video=youtube;FLP0-lowEPA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLP0-lowEPA][/video]
Click to expand...

"The Lost Missile" is a classic " Kronos "was as well --Have not seen that in many-many years. Ahh the old days, I miss them
 
[YOUTUBE]YUr7EVc44f8[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]9OjxhDx-iuc[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]INSTW8xfKU0[/YOUTUBE]

Here's what a Spartan 5 megaton warhead detonated a couple miles deep in Alaska will do... Shot Cannikin...
[YOUTUBE]rtH0EDLcbwA[/YOUTUBE]

That's from the film "Atomic Journeys: Welcome to Ground Zero" narrated by William Shatner. The film goes into greater detail, interviewing workers, including a miner who worked on the project-- they first drilled a bore hole 60 inches in diameter and about 2 miles deep on Amchitka Island, in Alaska. Then, he and other miners were lowered down to the bottom of the borehole, where they used acetylene torches to cut "doors" in the steel well casing, and then began mining out into the rock-- they had to carve a spherical chamber out of the rock about 600 feet in diameter IIRC, using nothing but pneumatic tools like jackhammers... air was pumped down to them for the tools and to ventilate the excavation as they worked. He commented how it was well over 100 degrees in the chamber due to its depth, and constantly raining inside as water dripped in from the surrounding rock, and yet on the surface it might be freezing or thereabouts... After months of excavation in shifts, they left the chamber behind, and the Cannikin device, a test warhead for the Spartan weapon system, was then lowered down the borehole to the correct depth to place it inside the casing in the center of the excavation, then the rig was lowered and hauled away, as the bomb detonating and sensing equipment was moved in and hooked up. When the bomb was detonated, it instantly threw the area of the island directly above it 25 feet high into the air, then it settled back-- that's why the rocks flew up off the ground in "zero gee" and then rained back down-- lakes were literally thrown up into the air as their bottoms dropped out from under them after being catapulted upward by the blast shock wave from deep below, as did the ocean along the coastline. It was later found that the area of the coastline and beach and near-shore seabed had been permanently raised by 5 feet. This test was originally supposed to be done in Tonopah, Nevada, but it was considered too big after the damage caused by a 1 megaton test detonation underground there...

The first test at Tonopah, "Faultless", which was about a 1 megaton underground explosion to test the suitability of the site for larger nuclear tests, had proven the site to not be acceptable--
[YOUTUBE]6ETHnsKnKiA[/YOUTUBE]

In fact, "Faultless" had caused a lot of unforeseen damage-- the valley floor surrounding the shot site basically collapsed by about 5-8 feet in places, creating new "cliffs" along natural fissures and fault lines in the area... a five megaton shot was out of the question, which is why it was moved to Alaska...

[YOUTUBE]xucDEmbz6Ww[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]ukBDZEDkGW4[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]M6yYtWH5_hk[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]ZUTJ8YjIojs[/YOUTUBE]

Really cool and interesting stuff...

Later! OL JR :)
 
boomtube said:
While the concept of “Blowing-up” a hurricane using a nuclear bomb would probably work and assuming some means was developed to mitigate the fallout; that still leaves us with what the heck happens to the Earth’s climate when its natural form of air-conditioning is disrupted.

Hurricanes are all about heat transfer and if hurricanes are stopped that heat has to go somewhere, somehow.

And yes; I saw that same cheesy film telling us we would all soon have electricity that was too cheap to meter.
Click to expand...

I doubt a hurricane would even have much of a hiccup from a nuclear blast... after all a hurricane releases the same amount of energy as a "typical" atomic bomb every 40 seconds or so... just in a different form and over a MUCH wider area. At any rate, hurricanes feed on HEAT, which nuclear weapons produce in prodigious amounts...

I think that it was the same sort of "gee whiz" thinking that got a LOT of these kinds of projects funded in the 50's... all you needed was the imagination to say "wouldn't be neat if..... " and the connections and moxie to present it and you could probably find someone willing to fund and support it in government or the military at the time...

Of course reality usually is somewhere else, but hey, when you've mastered this incredible level of power and you're looking for ways to utilize it, and where the limits of what it can and cannot do haven't been established yet, there's sort of a "why not" attitude...

Later! OL JR :)
 
I for one am sad that it never got built.:( It sounds absolutely majestic!
Never knew about it til' just now, so thanks for sharing so I can maybe incorperate it into my Lucid Dreaming.
 
Winston said:
Bless YouTube! The entire movie is there which I will be watching later:

[video=youtube;01ZN7CZkmeg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01ZN7CZkmeg[/video]
Click to expand...

I only got to 4 Minutes, because I need to go try to get some sleep, but that looks Awesome, so I'll finish watching it tomorrow.
Thanks for sharing.

"The World is on the brink of a Hydrogen War.." Oh noes!!! not a Hydrogen War!
 
luke strawwalker said:
Part of the Plowshare Program was oil and gas well stimulation... They drilled a well into hard impermeable gas-bearing shale in NW New Mexico and SW Colorado around Rifle, Colorado. These formations had copious amounts of hydrocarbons embedded in them, but the impermeability of the shale rock underground prevented economical extraction using 50's and 60's technology (and with the gas and oil prices of the time.) They drilled a well, then lowered some low to medium yield (kiloton range) nuclear devices down the borehole to the bottom of the well... then they detonated them. The nuclear blast vaporized a large cavity in the rock a few dozen yards wide, and deeply fracture the hard shale out into the formation well away from the cavity itself, which then allowed the gas to flow through the resulting cracks into the chamber and then up the borehole to the wellhead at the surface. The idea worked, but the problem was, the gas was too radioactive to distribute commercially... they capped the wells and that was that (after three separate tries in the same general area of New Mexico and Colorado. Today those formations are being drilled and tapped like wildfire and are producing like gangbusters, thanks to fracking technology being used to break up the rock and fracture it in the same way, sans the nuclear devices...Later! OL JR :)
Click to expand...


It just keeps coming back to old science fiction movies.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/?ref_=nv_sr_1
 
Last edited:
luke strawwalker said:
I doubt a hurricane would even have much of a hiccup from a nuclear blast... after all a hurricane releases the same amount of energy as a "typical" atomic bomb every 40 seconds or so... just in a different form and over a MUCH wider area. At any rate, hurricanes feed on HEAT, which nuclear weapons produce in prodigious amounts...
Click to expand...

Is it possible that instead of "blowing up" a hurricane (how do you blow up something made mostly of gas?) they were proposing to divert it to a track that didn't go over populated areas? Disney did that in "Eye in the Sky" (or maybe "Eyes in the Sky") in the mid-50's, a film exploring the use of manned space stations. They proposed diverting hurricanes using cloud seeding and other techniques. It's a "long short" (~20 min) and comes on their DVD with the "Man in Space" trilogy. A lot of the footage was also used in the waiting area of the "Mission to the Moon" attraction. That was changed to "Mission to Mars" after 1969 for some reason...
 

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