SLAM - America's Big Stick & Doomsday Weapon
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- Опубліковано 27 лип 2024
- Just before ICBM's became the de facto delivery system of choice, the US created what could be called the doomsday weapon of the cold war.
It was deemed so dangerous that the same government that commissioned it, cancelled it before it went into production. This is the story of Project Pluto and SLAM the unstoppable nuclear-powered cruise missile it created.
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Presented by Paul Shillito
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SLAM - a terrifying doomsday weapon so bad it made ICBMs look good.
Xtian death cult embodied.
Exactly ICBM are angels compared to SLAM which no missiles should be. The only thing that was terrifying thing about SLAM is that to radiate people while traveling on air.. talk about extreme efficiency, scientist back them knew a thing or two about efficiency.
@@sto2779 yeah... "efficiency..." like the old Chlorine shells...
ungertron 2020, might have to send one to Tehran.
Just remember when you see those good modern clubs from fifty miles away turn your head away cuz your eyelids are not nearly thick enough to prevent blindness. And exposed skin will get snd to third degree burns but if youre luky and its a large Hydrogen fusion bomb you'll have just over a second to find some shade quick cuz the lethal gamma rays that will pass through brick walls will not reach peak brightness until about a second or two after the initial nuclear fission detonator's nuke being immediately drowned in the much bigger fusion chain reaction (Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman 4tw!) and no need to duck and cover.. unless you are in the goldilocks zone from the blast but the dust will take care of anyone in it anyways and those downwind. Its a mess and who's going to clean up after that party. Thats the big teachers question who's stick they meant when they named the most terrifying thing man ever almost made.. so far. HL hf. Love. 🎩👍🦋
The movie "The Lost Missile" was based on this concept. Chilling.
I read about the SLAM project years ago in Smithsonian magazine. They had to figure out a way to keep the fuel elements separated during assembly, but then have the spacers somehow disappear later on so that the elements could move around. The solution was mothballs, which would sublime slowly. Aside from the technical creativity, it's interesting to see the amount of resources allocated to this project (the apprehension of nuclear annihilation will do that for you), and when it was made to work, that someone in authority had a Wile E.Coyote moment and asked "For heaven's sake- what are we DOING??" But I would stop short of calling the cold war "hysteria", because the threat was and is quite real. The menagerie of weapons-development programs of the 1950s were attempts to develop a credible deterrent that would not rapidly become obsolete and yet would not be threatening enough to prompt an enemy to strike first. The variety of approaches was driven by generous budgets and rapid advances in technology. The result has been our inheritance of a nuclear balance of terror that is stable enough that we can indulge in the luxury of not thinking about it too much.
My thoughts exactly in regard to throwing around the word "hysteria" in cotext of the threat that the USSR represented - communist ideological infiltration was a fact, everything in this murderous, inhuman system is perfectly tailored to capture the minds of naiive youths who don't understand how much freedom and prosperity they'd loose if they got their way.
Doomsday weapon? "Gentlemen you can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! "
@Zombobo Smith I saw some of Steve Martin's attempt at Clouseau and I cringed. Steve Martin does not have the depth that Sellers had partly because Sellers was himself a deeply flawed man and this came through in a subtle manner in his acting.
@Zombobo Smith if you like Sellers I recommend his part playing Clare Quilty in a Kubrick film I cannot mention the name of because of stupid UA-cam algorithms.
For some of Sellers other movies, try "The Mouse that Roared" and "Being There".
One of the funniest lines of all time.
Nice to see that Paul not only narrates the videos but he ALSO writes them and researched the information thoroughly
Whoa
Except when it comes to pronunciation of foreign names. Then all bets are off.
Or grammar. Or spelling.
Or quality of footage
Original footage is of variable quality, he can't help that.
I had a college math teacher who worked on this guidance system.
He and a team of other mathematicians had to develop a two dimensional equation that described the terrain under the flightpath.
@@Jock-mj4zd with a shit load of arguments I suppose
Bet he had a "glowing career" from all that radioactivity. :D
just avoid exponents. simple input output functions.
What's even deadlier than an atomic cruise missile, is Paul's taste in fashion. ❤
The shirts are from MadCap, they sponsor his channel and, to be fair, they actually have some really nice tasteful clothing too.
I really love this missile I hope US makes it again to show to Putin that it will wreck Russia in milliseconds or seconds.
This thing makes rail gun technology look like a stone age concept. Damned terrifying.
Site of nuclear testing ground called jackass flats. That made me chuckle.
The joke writes itself. Lol
Funny name but they had to change the name when Bill Clinton became president. It was found out that he had the same nickname for crooked hillary.
@Alan Nits: Jackass Flats was named in the 1800's, long before nuclear weapons existed. Pioneers & Prospectors named that particular stretch of Nevada because of the herds of wild donkey's living there.
You can still see the test site on Google Earth at 36 deg. 49' 46.00''N and 116 deg. 08' 30.00"W
I think the name was not given in the 20 but in the 18th or 19th century. Covered wagons, pulled by teams of donkeys and mules...etc.
It's funny how scientists at that time were trying to use atomic power for everything.
Is this what you wanted to say? I'm not sure anymore haha
dID YOU POST THIS HAHA
When UA-cam went down for awhile the other night - SkyNet was booted.
is this what you meant to say????????? You just trying to be some top commentator or something? Trying to prove some point?
Came from your video
"The government decided it was just too provocative and dangerous…" 11:47
Now just think about how much the government has done and this is where it drew the line!
Ol
Right, scary
The soviets gave two flight crews cancer trying to fly their response to this device, mistakenly thinking it was still being produced by the US. Really sad actually.
@@thefloridamanofytcomments5264 Give me some evidence.
@@BXJ-mi9mm Are you saying its impossible to believe that the Soviets would put their own people at risk in experimenting or producing weapons and nuclear power?
Can you imagine being a simple farmer in Siberia and one of these blows by you doing Mach 3 only a few hundred feet over your head?
True terror.
When you are stupid enough to push you opponents, you may squeeze off him Burevestnik and Status-6.
You wouldn't feel terror... You'd just die of the sound shockwave
@@wardywards8831 you'd see the plane first, followed by the blast.
The ingenuity involved in such insane projects never ceases to amaze me. Consider what could be achieved if this engineering creativity was used for peaceful or benign projects.
The only reason for this disparity was political. This kind of research got the funding. The Cold War was real, and it was terrifying. We did irrational things.
If every ounce of corruption could be removed from humanity, it could happen. But so long as it exists, there will always be a foreign threat that must be managed and dealt with.
Not profitable.
Theres no profits in peace...only war
You don’t have to make things safe with their military weapons that’s why peacetime nuclear is so difficult
"limited by how long you could keep the crew up there"
That's easy, just make nuclear-powered crewmen!
I spat my coffee while reading this
In the 60’s this comment would’ve been awarded an exploratory research grant.
Nuclear powered dildos
What crew ? This was to be a robot type.
You're turning violet Violet!
love seeing the b-52 in its old colors. walked around them for 6 years back in the 80s, the good ole days.
There's a SciFi book called "Berserkers" about 2 civilizations each from a different planet. After being at war for generations, one civilization built a "berserker" which was an artificially intelligent self-replicating automaton that seeked out the enemy planet inhabitants and destroyed them and then went on to look for more. At some point the berserkers "evolved" and continued seeking out all humans on all planets since the 2 original civilizations were killed off long ago.
Written by Fred Saberhagen, it was a series.
Great research, content, presentation and topics. Congratulations for making a far better channel than pretty much everything on TV!
TV?
I agree... However this is what TV used to be in the 80's, now this is TV.
Kinda futuristic device from like 1950 or something. This cathode RAY tube run the whole society for half a century. More powerful than any nuclear reactor, yet it fit in people's living rooms, kitchens, even cars. Imagine that. So advanced, nobody can figure out how it was made back in the day. C.D. should make a video.
It isn't a particularly high bar to do better than TV tbh.
THE PALM BAY FLORIDA FBI BOMB SQUAD WITH THE ST JOSEPHS CATHOLIC CHURCH OF PALM BAY FLORIDA STATED1994 U. S. . PRESIDENT CLINTONS NAME BEFORE THEY TACKLED ME IN BOMB GEAR FOR THE PRESIDENT OF IRAQ AND THE PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA and took me to COURT FOR BLASPHEMY 3 times in 12 months AT IRAQ HOSPITAL ON WMD TREATY ACTIVE DESERT STORM WAR
THE NAVY SEALS DID NOT TEACH ME HOW TO SHOOT A GUN or ESCAPE SALLY from the NCIS OF THE U. S. NAVY LEATHER HOSPITAL BED STRAPS WO BAG OVER MY HEAD FOR THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF IRAQ AND PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA
BECAUSE I AM MD OF WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION ACTIVE Navy SEAL TEAM 6 DEVGRU WHO WROTE FEDERAL HIPAA LAW WHICH REMOVES RIGHT TO BARE ARMS FOR 6 MONTHS ACTIVE DESERT STORM WAR 24 years
One of the things I enjoy about your channel is that I was a young Air Force officer and fighter pilot when your "Big Stick" was being developed. Turns out I never heard anything about it, or several other things you've brought to light. Well done, Paul.
Well done, or "holy rat crap... what a load."
@@BruceNitroxpro You could be right. Lord knows there's plenty of rat crap on youtube, I've had the impression that this channel seems to be trying for accuracy, though. Hope I'm right.
"I suppose I could part with one and still be feared …" ―Professor Farnsworth on his doomsday devices
Good news everyone
The Whole Point of the Doomsday Machine is Lost if You Keep it a Secret!"
It’s a deflection tactic.
"Vy didn't you tell ze world!"
Animals can be bred and SLAUGHTERED.
@@peterkuykendall3636 Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
@@robertromero8692 Let’s get into those mineshafts post haste
A lot of channels are going overboard with 'scary Halloween'.
As far as scary goes, I don't know if I've ever seen anything as scary as this weapon system.
Two words Tzar Bomba
@@jgedutis Hmmm.....not sure about that tbh.
This thing could have theoretically delivered multiple nuclear strikes, while flying around for months on end spewing out radiation, before crashing in a radioactive plume.
Tzar Bomba has the advantage in that we know what the yield is, but I'm not sure which is more scary.
Project Pluto could kill far more people than the Tzar Bomba.
@@davidhyland3833 really depends on the areas where they strike with missiles you drop the tsar bomba in NY and your probably going to kill alot more people than a few strikes in less populated areas of Russia
*shudders* cary enough to make the 50's US military/Government Blanch, even
Sometimes you just have to recognise how lucky this civilisation has been in the past and hope that luck continues.
Indeed.
Maybe this sort of thing is why we see no other technologically advanced species in our galaxy.
@@MuggsMcGinnis also why mars is a wasteland
@Funk Enstein Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the current administration just provide Saudi Arabia, home of the true radical Islam and 15 of the 9/11 highjackers, with nuclear weapon technology?
Attila Meszaros you’re wrong about giving them nuclear weapons, yes.
So much incredible technology was created after WWII which I assume was due to so many countries involved having incredible amounts of research going on to support the war effort. The SR71 was, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest feats of engineering that made it from the drawing board into actual production and implementation. Amazing what the scientists were able to come up with in this era, no challenge too tough to tackle. Hell, it led to us going to the moon.
Another good segment, as always. At once I always admired the ingenuity of such weapons and of course was simultaneously appalled that people would consider building such a thing. We are VERY, VERY lucky that cooler heads always prevailed. In the 90s I worked with our more conventional ICBM capability and I was always very proud of it - the ultimate deterrent. The recent news from Russia just brings it all back.. They build weapons because they think we have such a thing or some advantage (whether we do or not) and then of course we have to trump that, etc. etc. It's like an enormous Poker bluff.
Air and space magazine did an article years ago on SLAM. They called it "The Flying Crowbar". The nastiest weapon ever devised.
I worked with the terrain map dataset it would have used for navigation. There were *huge* errors in it, with false "cliffs" of up to 100 m elevation difference where maps quads lined up improperly. Good thing early cruise missiles were never needed, or they'd have been slamming into the ground from the errors.
Dudemon that’s terrifying. 💀
The rate of technological development in th 40s and 50s was so incredibly fast that they must have cut every conceivable corner and safety measure... The achievements and dreams were epic but it's probably best someone pushed the brakes a bit.
I remember reading years ago that the earlier cruise missiles based in the UK had a flaw that meant, if launched, they would return to their base.
Low accuracy of early satellite based synthetic-aperture radars would have been a major problem.
Lone pube ua-cam.com/video/U4kQROAhR90/v-deo.htmlm5s
Having watched this episode a number of times, it’s one of your best, if not your best. Well done!
I became aware of such development when I heard the tremendous roar of the engine several miles away. at the time I had no idea what could possibly creat such sound. Thanks for the informative presentation.
Powering a supersonic missile with a thermonuclear reactor... what could possibly go wrong?
I believe making things go wrong was the point.
*Edit: This reply was mostly sarcastic. I don't think fission reactors should replace jet fuel. Many people are missing the "/s" marker for sarcasm. (No big deal, I don't always read comments carefully myself.)*
I thought "thermonuclear" refers to fusion bomb/reactor. In contrast a fission reactor is not nearly as dangerous. Fission reactors are so safe, they should be used in airlines since jet fuel is getting so expensive. /s
Powering a supersonic missiles with a nuclear reactor and arming it with thermonuclear warheads... what could possibly go wrong? (it just sounds better the way I first phrased it)
Funny enough they did get Nuclear engines to work but aside from the other problems was a radioactive contrail which they never did figure out how to solve.
@Jet Quasar "sounds better the way I first phrased it"
I agree. But what am I to do? I see a UA-cam comment which could have an error so I'm compelled to show how smart I am (by acting dumb and replying). I don't think I'm the only one cursed with this affliction.
BTW, I up voted your original comment when I first read it.
This is definitely from an era when atomic energy was the solution to everything.
Seems they disabled the script
Beat me to it lol
@@dreamingblue3939 same!
Because it is every bit as much as enslaving carbon is, literally times 1000. (Yay energy density.) . Basically humanity discovered fire 2.0 and decided to more or less be ignorantly terrified of it.
@@Innomen not to mention the waste can be easily isolated and not constantly be in our atmosphere.
This is a great, first-class, fact filled documentary, as usual. And one has to wonder, why such systems could be seriously pursued beyond the drawing board, without considering the instrinsic dangers for the operating country and all the territories it would fly over. We are still trying to find safe long-term disposal sites for radioactive nuclear waste, and some are willing to take chances flying it around over our heads. The russians having had their own accident recently with a similar system, do not seem to have learned either. A nuclear power plant could, perhaps make sense in space,, but it is certainly not a good choice for low-altitude supersonic flight.
Great video. I love this guys delivery and basically the whole curious droid series. One of the best things on UA-cam!
From a technical standpoint, this is absolutely fascinating! On the other hand, it's also terrifying and in canceling the project they made the right call for the right reasons.
This is a developed weapon in Charles Stross's story "A Colder War." It's set in an alternative world where the Soviets have Cthulhu (or near equivalent) penned up in Chernobyl.
Fascinating! I thought your presentation was really well done and enjoyed it thoroughly. Thanks.
Astonishing.Both the topic covered and the quality of this video, as usual. Thank you indeed!
This is literally the first time I've ever heard of this project! Thanks for teaching me something new!
As for the project itself, I don't like the idea of a flying nuclear reactor, but I do like the idea of a non-stop flying object.
Isn't there a solar powered NASA drone that could theoretically fly nonstop?
jodudeit
{{ non-stop flying object }} I'm...kinda' ...hopin ' ...
that they can hook one up to Hillary 's Ass ...
before she tries to run again ...
*Solve A > LOT< of problems all the way around I think
Exactly my thoughts as well
I hope Hillary runs again it will burn through a lot of democrat cash for absolutely no gain for the democrats.
Thunderbirds Fireflash thunderbirds.wikia.com/wiki/Fireflash
Out of all the weapons mankind can develop, this is probably the scariest one.
*Multiple nukes, dropped one by one as it passes over enemy territory.
*Mach 3 at low altitude, obliterating everything with its non-stop sonic booms and shockwaves.
*Spewing radiation and poison over everything it flies over.
*Being able to do the above two things possibly for months, causing immense devastation, even without the nukes.
*And to top it all off, it can crash land once its fuel has been spent in enemy territory, exposing and leaving its highly contaminated and radioactive nuclear reactor to desolate the surrounding area for decades, if not centuries.
Thank goodness they never finished that thing. This is an actual true end-of-the-world weapon. Absolutely horrific.
Just the comment I was looking for!
Agreed.. this terrifying weapon was never to be ( thank God!!!) and what if there were two or three?? Certainly this end-of-the-world weapon prolly brought the Russians to the negotiation table more than any one(?) weapon.
The most terrifying part is that it could do all of that for *months* without stopping. Can you imagine? Entire communities would die of radiation poisoning and fear the sound of the scramjet for months on end.
@@tusing7780 that's terrifying even to think of... you could make a whole movie just out of the big stick! Like people would know when to hide when the big stick is about to go over... etc etc
It would make an amazing movie! Depressing, but amazing. Perhaps a group of survivors that sacrifice themselves to bring the scramjet down, tracking its path, knowing they will die of radiation etc.
You're great man. I love your videos. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting a million views. Congratulations!
This is my new favourite channel. Awesome narrator and great scripts.
Cool vidio. A genuinely scary peice of technology from the 1960's. One wonders what scary machines lurk in the shadows of secrecy in the here & now if the US was capeable of this so long ago.
One can make sewage pumps run backwards almost anywhere, poisoning the drinking water of entire nations.
try the tr3b and aurora
Ten years or so later the USAF was having a mech service it's bombers. Delicate enough to pick eggs out of cartons and lift a model up gently without harming the woman.
It was considered inefficient and retired.
@@Garganzuul Sewage and clean water lines run on separate pipes you idiot.
this video makes me feel sad to be human as the bomb is created to do one thing only and thats to kill as many people as possible in one explosion. its the sadest moment in humans history. its disgusting really.
it feels like cristmas everytime this channel uploads something
Nani what are u doing here
Rulo6000 Christmas *
wow didnt expect to see my bias boi rulo here
check out wendover productions you'd like that as well
Nani?
And yes, the guidance technology reminded me very much of the Tomahawk cruise missile. That was the precursor.
The advantage of a slow delivery system is it gives you more time for second thoughts.
I may have been hypnotized by his shirt! 😵
Had to replay the beginning, missed half the narrative first time around due to 'shirt flash' - Boom! Nice one Paul : )
I also get hypnotized by his shit
THE PALM BAY FLORIDA FBI BOMB SQUAD WITH THE ST JOSEPHS CATHOLIC CHURCH OF PALM BAY FLORIDA STATED1994 U. S. . PRESIDENT CLINTONS NAME BEFORE THEY TACKLED ME IN BOMB GEAR FOR THE PRESIDENT OF IRAQ AND THE PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA and took me to COURT FOR BLASPHEMY 3 times in 12 months AT IRAQ HOSPITAL ON the 1995 IN FORCE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION TREATY ACTIVE DESERT STORM WAR
THE NAVY SEALS DID NOT TEACH ME HOW TO SHOOT A GUN or ESCAPE SALLY from the NCIS OF THE U. S. NAVY LEATHER HOSPITAL BED STRAPS WO BAG OVER MY HEAD FOR THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF IRAQ AND PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA
BECAUSE I AM MD OF WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION ACTIVE Navy SEAL TEAM 6 DEVGRU WHO WROTE FEDERAL HIPAA LAW WHICH REMOVES RIGHT TO BARE ARMS FOR 6 MONTHS ACTIVE DESERT STORM WAR 24 years
@@desertstormwar1463 -Off our meds, are we?
Great video as always
THE NAVY SEALS DID NOT TEACH ME HOW TO SHOOT A GUN BECAUSE I AM MD OF WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION ACTIVE Navy SEAL TEAM 6 DEVGRU WHO WROTE FEDERAL HIPAA LAW WHICH REMOVES RIGHT TO BARE ARMS FOR 6 MONTHS ACTIVE DESERT STORM WAR 24 years
Another great piece Paul. Very good.
9:23 this most likely what went wrong with the Russian "Skyfall" hypersonic missile that just melted down the other day.
Russian's like to play the classic game called "russian roulette"... America is just gunna go back to its backyards and pull out it's good old mama "SLAM-Dunk" with an updated version for the year 2020.
Not all hypersonic missiles are Nuclear.
Guy just finishes stacking the thousands of rods into the core... someone yells “Jenga” and kicks it over...
Sweater Wearing Squirrel . D'OH!! 😵
Just from the perspective of the time this came out of, that has got to be one of the most terrifying weapons.
An unstoppable machine flying at hypersonic speed for weeks or months that's only purpose is to salt the earth.
Having this deployed even today would be catastrophic.
The idea was to crash it into a final target location after the last bomb had been ejected. There was little point to keep it flying and contaminating large areas as there wasn't really thought to be much left after the bombs had been dropped that was worth anything militarily or economically.
Slam: " produces 150 db’s ". PS4 that hasn’t been cleaned in 4 years: " Finally! A worthy opponent, our battle will be legendary "
You have the coolest videos. Keep up the hard work, very professional.
This is definitely from the era when nuclear power was seen to be the solution to all man's problems.
It is a solution in the sense that we would have no more problems.
Wow! I never knew about these nuclear powered missiles. Amazing how much we were able to accomplish 70 years ago without modern supercomputers.
This is a terrifying weapon especially how it could be used as a vengeance device in a MAD situation.
Cheers
"Speak softly, but carry a BIG STICK." -- Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt
It’s amazing what we can do when motivated to kill each other
This is such an interesting channel. Love it!!!
BTW Paul you're doing a great job with your channel. Thank you :)
As usual: excellent research, content, and presentation, Paul. I love the impartiality of Curious Droid. The lack of bias is most appreciated in these bigoted, moronic, polarised times. No jingoism, no sabre-rattling, no bloody flag-waving, just facts for grown-ups. Very refreshing. Why, it's positively old-fashioned!
:-)
Very good video. Can only imagine what's still tucked away
Content: 100 / 100 points.
Shirt: 100 / 100 points.
An outstanding achievement in UA-cam history (applause)
As if ICBMs were not scary enough.
It was before ICBMs ....
Talk about irony
The fact that even in the coldest part of the cold war, the US had enough sense to retire this program is a good sign for humanity. Both sides put up with a lot of shit from each other but this would have been one of those things that couldn't be ignored. Kind of like the missiles in Cuba/Turkey.
To borrow a line from Nanki-poo: "Modified rapture!" We had enough sense to pull back reluctantly from genocide, but only after looking into it really hard for decades, weighing our options carefully, and spending millions to develop the genocide option. And, of course, we're currently voiding all those treaties as quickly as we can, because we want more genocide options NOW.
Noup, US left that program in favour of ICBM systems 10:53 -nothing to do with favour in humanity.
christosvoskresye The more fearsome tools we have, the lesser chance for a genocide.
Yep, the MAD doctrine... the madder - the better...survival guaranteed... every madman mad as bat would agree...
Yeah well we still have nukes in Turkey and they never left lol
Absolutely fascinating stuff! When it got to 8:20 and the details of its materials and assembly I knew I had to leave a comment... 😎 Thank you...
omg 15 seconds in and i'm dying "bombers with a backbone of sac" this is gunna be a great voice over :D
Thank you for this. I knew about the project, but this is the most detailed explanation that I've currently seen!
One extreme irony of this, is the nuclear bomber program put young aeronautical engineers, who had no training or experince, in charge of trying to build a smaller & lighter nuclear reactor. That gave us the molten salt Thorium reactor. 50 years later, the only reason we still use Uranium not Thorium as our main nuclear fuel, is Uranium reactors give us Plutonium, which we need for hydrogen bombs. The lightweight reactor designed for the nuclear bomber, is in every possible way, a better & safer system.
Kneedragon1962
How?
Black Wall - That's not the subject, and properly answering would take more than a hundred words...
It's not a self sustaining reaction, which can run away and produce a nuclear explosion. Or a melt-down, a 'China syndrome' like Fukashima or Chernobyl. Fission happens because of a gun, which is powered by the electricity your plant generates. If anything goes wrong with the reactor you switch off the gun, and the reaction stops instantly.
Next the molten salts start to cool, and after a short period of time, they're no longer molten, so a break in the loop will not result in leakage. The chance of radio-active coolant spilling into the environment, virtually zero.
Then there is the issue of nuclear proliferation. I would hesitate to say you can't make plutonium and other heavy elements & isotopes this way, but it's not the way you'd choose to do it. There's also the question of Rube Goldberg mixtures, and Thorium reactor that also gets some old uranium fuel rods and powders them, and stirs the mixture into their cooling salt. That will also give some more energy, but you're going back into the nuclear mess that Thorium was supposed to get you out of... Now policing those Rube Goldberg machines, inspecting them and telling the international atomic energy commission that the people's republic of Utopia are not making hydrogen bombs and you can prove it, that all gets extremely hard when you have a mixed thorium/ uranium cycle... and some of the resulting waste is really nasty stuff, even by the standards of nuclear waste...
As long as you go pure Thorium, not mixture, then they're a better mouse-trap.
Then there's the question of how much Uranium there is, v how much Thorium there is. And odd thing, when you find rare earths for magnets and super-conductors, (like used in big wind turbines) you have to extract your precious rare earths from all this nasty shit Thorium.... The two are found together. And Thorium is about 12 ~ 20 times more common & plentiful than Uranium. It's not quite common in the way titanium oxide is (that shit is everywhere!) but it's not what you'd call rare.
Kneedragon1962 Some videos purport the benefits of Thorium reactors. Others downplay their suitability. Many decades have passed since the first Thorium reactors were developed. Yet to my knowledge, only India still has an active Thorium research program. WHY? Plutonium production is a poor rationale, as there's no shortage of plutonium production to preclude dozens of countries from building Thorium reactors IN ADDITION TO 'conventional' ones.
Gregory Parrot - I'm pretty sure China has a Thorium reactor program. At this point it's 'experimental' but they're very interested. For one thing, they have masses of Thorium (like tens of thousands of tons of it) that's an unwanted bi-product of their rare earths program. They'd LOVE to find a use for it.... At the moment it's pollution.
The history of why Thorium has been overlooked, that's a long and complicated story, and a lot of the blame falls on Nixon, who wanted to reward his Republican friends in N California, and saw absolutely no reason to give research money to Democrats in S Cali, because they were not about to stop opposing him no matter how much government money he gave them...
The 'reason' nobody does it that way, is because nobody does it that way. If it was better, surely they'd be using it, right? The whole project couldn't have been stopped over something as dumb as Nixon's cost-benefit appraisal - partisan politics, could it? Yeah, it could....
The Uranium cycle people absolutely don't want Thorium to come into the picture and spoil their game. So they produce a lot of slightly misleading and inaccurate fluff to downplay it. Mostly the information is accurate, but the way they present it is deliberately misleading.
For one thing, there's no such thing as a standard molten salt reactor. You can make one which uses pure Thorium (which I am cheering for) or you can make some kind of mixture, with molten salt and Thorium, but also some crushed up 'spent' uranium fuel rods, and that gives you all the pros & cons of the whole fast-breeder cycle... As long as you stay with pretty much pure Thorium, you really can't make nuclear weapons from it. Or let's say maybe you could, perhaps, but it's a horribly inefficient way to do it. And the mixed reactor types do produce some really nasty waste....
Even assuming your Nixon explanation is the primary motive for the U.S., it does not explain why so many other nuclear capable countries have not pursued it in the intervening decades. So, I assume there's more to it.
It seems fitting that your wore the most incedious loud shirt for this video... on another note, love your content
Really great, really informative, thank you.
Channels like this make me have hope for the future.
He´s talking about a nuclear powered doomsday missile... channels like these make me have little hope for the future...
Then go watch cat videos
whatever
But videos like this make me despair. Because after the catastrophic event for mankind that was WW2, they then went full-pelt into the insanity of projects like these. I mean, WW2 didn't kill enough so let's build something that could kill more than the entire war in one single launch. That aspect of human nature is fuckin scary.
@@fulanitoflyer so you're saying videos like everyday bro by Jake Paul is more entertaining to watch than this ? I feel this is better than 90% of the content on UA-cam
wrap your head around how much engineering, money, and time was used to build the compressor wind tunnel for the test of the scaled-down test model reactor for less than a minute. just 1 type of test involved in the entire project.
Outstanding video!
Subscribed!
The missile knows where it is at all times
@ 1:45 B-36 was a monster turbo-prop/jet engine propelled plane, before B-52"s were in wide production. B-52's still used, with constant updating of components. With new engine upgrades, B-52's will keep flying into 2020s!
It didn't have turboprops. The propellers were driven by pistons.
largest piston driven production aircraft ever
B-52 is projected to be in service until at least the 2040s. That will make it a 90-year-old design. And it was designed when the airplane was only a 50-year-old invention and military planes had service lives of only a few years.
And will breake in the air, yes keep it flying junk
So in the end the lesson was "speak softly and carry an ICBM?"
You could also say they went to Speak softly and carry a big stick loaded with a bunch of medium stick. ( SLBMs)
It really says something about Project Pluto, knowing that the pentagon, at the height of the cold war, said no to the project on the grounds that it was needlessly destructive and overly provocative. These people were ready to glass the planet and there were plenty of elements in the pentagon who thought we should have a go at the soviets. And this was too much even for *them*.
We can toss around numbers, energy yields, estimates of destruction - but at the end of the day, I don't think there's any synopsis better than the fact that even the madmen thought it was too insane.
I think these would've honestly ended the world
One of the best channels on YT!
This shirt is so funky🍄
It's like the new SLAM Russia announced earlier this year... In fact it sounds exactly the same;
"The Russian military, he said, had developed a number of significant new military systems. One was a nuclear-powered drone submarine that could be deployed to initiate nuclear strikes around the world. Another was a new form of hypersonic missile that is much harder to detect by defense systems. Those missiles, too, could be armed with nuclear warheads.
Most remarkably, Putin announced a new form of nuclear-powered cruise missile that also could initiate a nuclear strike. The advantage of using nuclear power for the missile is simple: Its range would be extended significantly. That extension is central to the geopolitics behind Putin’s announcements."
The submarine part sounds exactly the same as the plot of the first xXx movie.
so what was the reason to cancel the program?.. Russians have eventually developed their version anyway..
I think the US program was beyond 50s technology and cold war geopolitics played a big role too.
is now the time to revive it?
To be honest I think the Russians are bluffing... And with the amount of MARVs the US have I really think its not needed.
Another interesting video, love them,
and of course another cool mod shirt, ;-)
Makes sense. The US has honed and perfected "insidious". Great video.
That's a nuclear powered shirt!
and that's the damage by just ONE of these things.
Never mind the weapons, your shirts scare the hell outta me! :-))
Don't let that be the last thing I see.
Great video that details the engineering that other videos skim over. The infrastructure just to test it is an impressive feat on its own.
Wow. 1950s technology! Makes me wonder what they have now ?
US developed the first nuclear powered dolphin in 2018
Magnetic drive tech from. Alien crash!
They have nothing compared to what the Russians have! Americans just love to shout so loudly when they sing their songs.Typical of the madness that has infected them.
Uh....Gender studies?
Now we excel in PC and SJW insanity
I love that at the last possible moment they said "Naahh, thats too extreme, cancel that shit". The 50s were so close to armageddon.
Always a pleasure to learn, keep up the great work
I'm a huge fan Sir! Please make your videos longer. Thanks a lot for this Channel
At a time when the US enjoyed a military superiority over the USSR (but kept it secret, even from most senators and representatives because it was feared it would expose information sources}, it was certainly overkill.
This reminded me of the original Star Trek episode " The Doomsday Machine".
Or Dr. Strangelove.
"We cannot have, a mineshaft gap"
Star Trek was made in the 1960s, and definitely not in a vacuum. It was a product of its time for sure.
Love the videos keep them coming.
I was the one who came up with the idea for the nuclear powered paper air plane, it only seemed to work on paper!
I'm looking to start a space program and your channel has been a big help 😀👍🏼
Those of you who were not alive and old enough to understand at the time are not capable of truly understanding what it was like back then. In school we had fire drills like everyone else and living in an area where tornadoes were common we also had tornado drills. We also had NUCLEAR ATTACK drills! Sometimes those drills were just at schools but sometimes they ran the air raid sirens. I promise you, air raid sirens are not pleasant things to hear. Growing up in Texas, most of the places I lived had an Air Force base nearby so were definitely on the Soviets' target list. Oh, and it was also a time before they outlawed supersonic flight over the continental U.S. so we got to hear the window-rattling BOOMS on a frequent basis. It was a different time.
Bill Mullins Duck and cover. I remember it well. Scary time to grow up in😳
@@iggymorts7086 Don't you know it, brother! I once was an office on Reese AFB near Lubbock, TX and saw the official chart for the warning sirens for various time until an attack. There were steady tones for a certain length of time and wavering tones for a certain length of time but the "warning signal" for a sneak attack was unbelievable. The warning signs of a sneak attack - and this was on an official U.S. Govt. poster, mind you - were "Bright Flash, Loud Noise". I am not kidding. The official "warning signal" for a sneak attack was "Bright Flash, Loud Noise". Unfortunately if you saw/heard the sign of a sneak attack you probably wouldn't have time to process the info, much less put your head between your knees and kiss your ass good bye. My first USAF duty station was at a base just outside Wichita, Ks. There were EIGHTEEN Titan II missile sites ringing the city. Additionally, over 60% if all the private aircraft on the PLANET were made within a half-hour drive of downtown Wichita. If the balloon had gone up there would have been a 60+ mile wide sea of glass centered on Wichita when it was over.
Bill Mullins “BrightFlash, Loud Noise?” Yeah that sounds about right. Thanks for the reply and thanks for your service to this country!!!
I'd believe it. I think that's why russia is brandied about as such a political boogeyman today. All that fear bred into kids decades ago is easy to play upon now.
@@Ammothief41 No, the kids nowadays don't care about anything except internet connection.
Take that away and they will bawl and scream and roll on the floor.
Excellent and informative video, as always, thanks.
I can think of a few issues that would have prevented construction of a full-scale working missile in the 1960's. The project team reached the first critical milestone by testing the full-scale 500MW (670,000 HP) reactor for five minutes. And the scale wind tunnel models could have been developed to make a controllable aircraft.
But the terrain-following radar guidance system wouldn't be developed to the point of deployment in subsonic cruise missiles until the late 1970's. How much longer would it have taken to develop a system for a missile flying 3-4 times as fast?
Long-duration Mach 3 flight was just becoming possible by the mid-60's, but only at high altitudes. Down at 500 feet, aerodynamic heating would probably have beaten any of the available materials of the time, and the high temperatures that would have heat-soaked through the entire airframe would have been a challenge for the thermonuclear payload to survive.
Assuming those issues could be overcome, then doing Mach 3 separations of heavy thermonuclear bombs without causing the thing to go out of control would have been far in excess of the capabilities of autopilot systems of the day.
Ramjet talks make me think about the sexy SR-71
Yeah it is!
And there is it ? I know it was tested but it start to fail, like at least four times, then project is likely suspended for now, Russian test infinite-range-cruise missile for over a year now, it may get in troops soon, china made some adavancements too, us i laking bihind in every hi-end tech present on the planet today, and dont get start on F-35, ZUMWALT and RAILGUN, all of the projects are far fetch, unready and really push degrading us MC too far, 800 Bn ? How funny, maybe you need 800 Trn to do something ?
олег бурдин your comments have nothing to do with this reply comrade troll. Move along.
@@stingray427man
Dont call me comrade, COMRADE, my comment relavant because it represented as something new, but it is old, and forgotten, i know why now, because UU currently have nothing od sorts, even HYPERSONIC and regular cruise missiles are stay behind, Russian and Chineese ones, so Usasses need to CONVINCE public they still superior, i am not a troll i am telling truth, USA in deep shit but think it smell Russia swet not own shit.
Now you gotta tell me, i am troll, US have 1000 bln military budget and already have laser, railguns and other superior tech, alredy in troops, NASA and USAF planned launch enother SPACE-CRUISER in the orbit, and US already have bases on the Moon and Mars.
Russ-Soviets all armed with mosin rifles (some with ak-s) all their system are old and breaking down freakeuntly and so-on so-on e.t.c, (did i represent MSM (liears) thruth tellers right, RIGHT ?
"Speak softly, and carry a big stick" --Teddy Roosevelt
Very cool stuff. T here was also a manned version of that concept that went pretty far. In those days, we were afraid of "Ivan" big time. I remember having the air drill activities in schools. Hide under the desk... LOL
Very well done video and complete technical story piece (no missing finer points). Also had some video footage I had never seen. Thanx.