The Flash falcon would be able to take off and land like a helicopter thanks to its moveable engines (Credit: Oscar Vinals)
Posted on 09/28/2017 6:42:27 AM PDT by Red Badger
A supersonic airliner that flies at three times the speed of sound – and runs on nuclear fusion. Stephen Dowling investigates the challenges of making airliners run on atomic power.
It could whisk you from London Heathrow and have you stepping onto the air bridge at New York’s John F Kennedy airport just three hours later. It would take you in no small comfort – luxuriously so, if you’re in first class – at speeds approaching 2,300mph (3,680km/h), the Atlantic Ocean racing below your feet.
The Flash Falcon, looking like a spacecraft from the video game franchise Halo, is a futuristic peg to fill the hole left by the retirement of the Supersonic Concorde in 2003. No prototypes have been built though – the design so far lives only in the imagination of Spanish designer Oscar Vinals, who also designed a ‘whale-shaped’ giant airliner BBC Future profiled back in 2014.
The Flash Falcon, Vinals’ concept imagines, would carry 250 passengers at Mach 3, in an airframe more than 130ft (39 metres) longer than a Concorde and with a wingspan twice as wide. Its engines would even be able to tilt up to 20 degrees to help the aircraft take-off and land like a helicopter.
At the heart of the Flash Falcon is something even more revolutionary; Vinals' aircraft is designed to fly on nuclear power, with a fusion reactor pumping energy to its six electric engines.
“I think nuclear fusion could be the best future source to obtain great amounts of electric energy,” Vinals tells BBC Future. “At the same time, it’s ‘green’ without creating dangerous waste.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The Flash falcon would be able to take off and land like a helicopter thanks to its moveable engines (Credit: Oscar Vinals)
Allahu Akbar!
The USAF experimented with a nuclear-powered bomber.
And it can use off-the-shelf fusion reactors.
What could possibly go wrong???
Lots of pictures of it here:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/28335399/FF-Flash-Falcon-Electric-Supersonic-Jet
The USAF experimented with a nuclear-powered bomber.
I think popular science had an article on nuclear airplanes but there was a radiation problem they could not solve.
Go to the article link. There’s pictures of the nuclear USAF aircraft.........
Same designer? https://mikeshouts.com/future-air-travel-awwa-sky-whale/
Looks like it.................
I'm waiting for Home Depot to run one of their special sales on those babies. I'll probably pick up 2 or 3.
They make great Christmas gifts.
Now they can lose your baggage at Mach 3.
One of the issues was the weight of the shielding.
“Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed.”
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