ITT: Post experimental aircraft, military hardware and spacecraft from the 1950s/1960s.
Concept art *and* prototypes are welcome.
I can't be the only /his/torian who loves this shit.
We could be colonising the system this very second with this thing. We could have built them decades ago. All with technology we currently have and understand completely.
The nuclear test ban treaty blocked their construction.
Meet Lockheed Martin's CL101 flying aircraft carrier and tactical strike aircraft, with a wingspan the same size as a Nimitz, a five HUNDRED man crew, this is the largest functional aircraft ever to be designed. Power by 4 massive nuclear ram jet engines (lifted initially by 160 auxiliary engines) it is supposed to fly at 40k+ feet and; see those fuckers under the wings? F-104 starfighters.
Now, I did some math before because someone asked "what if we strap cannons from a battle ship onto it", and so I did.
>calculate the force of the projectile from a 16" Iowa class gun fired from 60k
>>1058959
Was my question, I do believe that's how high it could possibly go, and it came out to be
539,154,482 foot lbs of force on a single point 16" in diameter.
That's a lot of fucking force.
Well, it has a 2 million lb payload, so let's drop a 2 million lb chunk of uranium.
If you just drop a 2 million lb rod of uranium from 60,000 ft it it would have:
Speed at impact:598.70m/s
or 2155.33km/h
Time until impact: 61.09s
Energy at impact: 162929291616.00 joules
Force: 120170478533.892 foot lbs of force.
I am creaming my pants.
>>1058377
Yeah that, and the fact that conventionally powered rockets capable of orbital flight went through many, many catastrophic failures even when they were theoretically supposed to work flawlessly.
When testing a fusion or fission powered rocket, that amount of failure is not acceptable. Maybe once in the desert or Siberian tundra, but any more than that would receive a huge amount of public backlash and would have shelved the project anyway.
Considering Project Orion would have had to be a few times larger than the large launch system ever developed, I don't see it as a possibility when it was being proposed and either major space program had the capability to fund it.
It is more feasible now than ever though, with computer modeling and thousands of hours of data on the flight handling of conventional rockets, and for that the Outer Space Treaty and the CNTBT are an impediment.
>>1058959
>>1058983
>120170478533.892 foot lbs of force
A test bed for the reactor that would eventually go into the proposed nuclear powered bomber.
Unfortunately/fortunately, depending on your view, the whole project was shelved, and the reactor was never used.
>>1059007
The 50's were quite a time in military development. A lot like China's military modernization and wack design testing today.
>>1059016
I wouldn't really compare the two.
The Goblin. An experimental attack aircraft that was meant to be dropped by a bomber. It's essentially an engine with wings and a seat.
>>1059036
Parasite fighters were a popular concept back then.
The Soviets tried to do the same thing during WW2, if I recall.
The Low maintenance rifle. An experimental weapon that was meant to be distributed to rebel groups the US wished to back. It was supposed to be a super cheap full auto only 5.56 rifle.
The idea was scrapped because it's easier to just dump surplus gear on people you want to arm.
>>1058377
What happens when a rocket carrying hundreds of nukes disintegrates in the upper atmosphere?
>>1059032
I would. The amount of wacky weird military designs that are being tested in China is quite astonishing. Hypersonic waveriding ICBM's, stealthy blimps that float in the mesosphere for communications, and massive military armament upgrades bringing it into the 21st century.
A B-47B using JATO. These early bombers couldn't take off using the power of their jet engines, thus the use of rockets.
Not really experimental, but still cool.
>>1059058
nukes don't go off because it takes a lot to set a nuke off.
>>1059061
Yeah, but the PRC is playing catchup, and often using established designs to do so.
The US and the USSR were going through uncharted territory.
Here is an M16 equipped with a AN/PVS-2 Starlight optic, a Gen 1 design.
>>1059079
Okay, so assuming the material doesn't leave its protective casing and survives an explosion without being cast open and falling everywhere, you now have hundreds of nuclear bombs scattered across a wide radius.
That can't be good?
>>1059036
Kawaii.
