What You Need to Know: During the Atomic Age, the U.S. embarked on the ambitious Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program, ...

Along with dreams like the Submerged Nuclear Ramjet and the Model 49 AAFSS, Consolidated/Convair produced realities like the PBY Catalina, the B-36 and the Atlas missile. California dreaming, indeed.

Along with dreams like the Submerged Nuclear Ramjet and the Model 49 AAFSS, Consolidated/Convair produced realities like the PBY Catalina, the B-36 and the Atlas missile. California dreaming, indeed.

The nuclear ramjet engine at the heart of Project Pluto is key to what made this weapon so horrific. A ramjet is a very simple engine design, with essentially no moving parts.

A nuclear ramjet still suffers from the same weakness of the traditional liquid-fueled version, namely the need to accelerate it up to around Mach 3 before the incoming air is compressed and pre ...

In a 2013 brochure, the NNSS claimed that the principles behind the ramjet power used nuclear heat in combination with the force from the air in front of a vehicle to make it expand.

Theodore Merkle, the director of Project Pluto, identified these in a 1959 report titled, “The Nuclear Ramjet Propulsion System.” The first challenge was the size and durability of the reactor. Most ...

And Russia's mention of a liquid-propulsion system also does match with the Project Pluto ramjet, which didn't use liquid nuclear fuel. The village of Nyonoksa, pictured in October 2018.

The Bussard Ramjet is an elegant solution for sending crewed missions to other star systems, at least in theory. Earlier concepts like nuclear pulse propulsion (NPP) and fusion propulsion had been ...