Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
- Start date
I wonder if there’s enough heat to generate the jet velocity necessary for supersonic flight.A concept for a nuclear-powered turbojet with 400kg thrust. Air enters from the left and is compressed, then it flows through the reactor core and exits into the high pressure turbine stage and is then expelled out of the nozzle.
by78
General
That will depend on the size/weight of the aircraft and those of the engine(s). If this is intended for a high-endurance missile or a modestly-sized UAV, then it's possible.
Seems to be for a Missile rather than an aircraft or UAV. Whatever pressed Russia to develop, with great pain, those wunderweapons can't be dismissed as being non existent in China's case.
Its only natural China takes a look at nuclear powered cruise missiles. Might be the pinnacle of heavy hitting troposphere flight weapons.
Other than loiter time, does a nuclear-powered missile give any other benefits? Unless you're making some doomsday nuclear fallout device
Anything nuclear sounds scary and could trigger people.
Independent of size and weight the exit velocity of the jet determines the maximum speed that any object using that jet for propulsion can be accelerated to. This is an inherent property of reaction mass engines.
Note: this is correct in the current context of air-breathing jet engines. A rocket burning oxidizer carried on-board does not suffer inlet momentum drag and can fly faster than its exhaust jet velocity though.
EDIT: And yeah, you do have to wonder about specific thrust (by extension max. speed and T/W ratio). OTOH, the nuclear ramjet planned for the Pluto SLAM suggests the materials technology is there to operate a reactor at sufficient temperatures. And at the aircraft level (i.e. including fuel mass) T/W ratio might actually come out favourably due to the energy density of the fuel supply being insanely high.
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Except if anything goes wrong, unlike a nuclear powered carrier or SSN, it is far less contained and containable. Such a thing would be traveling very quickly through the atmosphere with very few if any means of cold shut downs. Insensible and suicidal weapons to pursue.
