Coming To a War Near You: Nuclear Powered Drones 202
An anonymous reader writes "American scientists and engineers are researching a new generation of UAV's that would be nuclear-powered. Why do this? They would have the capacity to stay over a target area for months and only be limited by the ordinance they could drop on a potential foe. They would be similar to a nuclear attack submarine but not limited to the amount of food on-board. The article notes: 'The blueprints for the new drones, which have been developed by Sandia National Laboratories – the U.S. government's principal nuclear research and development agency – and defense contractor Northrop Grumman, were designed to increase flying time "from days to months" while making more power available for operating equipment, according to a project summary published by Sandia,' the paper reported."
Re: (Score:0, Interesting)
wish Rob Malda was back. This new Slashdot management are a bunch of corporate fucks.
Malda had a sense of humor about trolling and flamebait I didn't come to respect until soon before he left. He understood that even n-word posts have their place in a wide diversity of posts, some infuriating, some funny, some trollish, some informative, etc. Far as I can tell he felt like the mod system would handle it, and it does, and that people are adults who don't need to read anything they dislike.
Not this new batch. They look like they came from some idiotic marketer's focus group or something. Say something they dislike just once, BAM, the banhammer, no anon posting for XX hrs. They love using it. They remind me of a school principal who thinks zero tolerance is the answer to everything. Bunch of bureaucratic fucks. Go ahead and have your petty revenge on me for telling the truth, assholes.
Guess I'll be banned some more. They're like the idiot who has only a hammer and thinks everything is a nail. I bet they wake up each morning, look in the mirror, and say "how come they don't respect you?"
Administrator, I respected Rob Malda. Adminstrator, you're no Rob Malda.
Environmental Impact? Crashes? Malfunctions? (Score:4, Interesting)
Project Pluto (Score:5, Interesting)
The United States started work in this field back in the 60s, trying to build cruise missiles that would be able to fly around continuously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto [wikipedia.org]
Re:Area 51 and the Odd Uncle... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm, don't think they ever made it to Area 51, but the military did develop nuclear powered aircraft. The idea was an ultra-range bomber, and I saw what remains of the engines (using a molten-salt reactor for heat) out in Idaho National Lab. The program was scrapped because of missiles, subs, and because it's a bad idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_aircraft [wikipedia.org]
Also those pilots were probably just wearing crazy looking flight suits for high altitude, like SR-71 pilots.
Re:I for one.... (Score:3, Interesting)
"demonization of things like guns that are also a form of power"
How so when the NRA is one of the nation's biggest lobbying groups and most of Congress is in their pocket? Soon they will push to allow prisoners to have guns.
"burdensome tax codes"
Sorry you have to pay to maintain a society. Even at a poker game everyone has to ante up whether they win or lose.
"attacks on...religion"
Organized religion has been on a quest for power itself for thousands of years. Don't make it look like a victim.
"obsession with group identity and ignorance of individuality, promotion of left/right either-or thinking...Messianic leaders who claim to understand them"
Like in religion?
what factor, and the side of military research (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems to me the very best way to avoid doing that is to restrict the military to securing one's own border (and only one's own border) against unprovoked foreign attacks. Then you could also reduce expenditures until we're only 2-3 times more powerful than the second strongest military.
That's also why I would never make it in politics.
Agreed in concept. Today US aircraft fly the world's most advanced air weapons systems against no threat, so it's easy to argue US military power exceeds the needs of the nation. But that factor of 2-3 times is where the question comes in for everyone. The rapid and unexpected growth of the German war machine in the 1940s makes a very strong historical example to support the argument that 2-3 times is not sufficient. The boundary conditions of what worst case scenario to base the analysis on and what contribution from allies to assume makes for solid arguments that would support a very wide range of numbers.
The other side of the story is that the US military's R&D spurs and creates technological innovation in private industry, which adds to global wealth. Military R&D goals are different from market or academic goals, so it often will ask and fund very different research questions from academic and market channels. The research is done by firms that fully intend to make profit-producing products out of the research results, so a small percentage of the technology trickles down into major advances in commercial goods.
It's not the best way to do it, but this is very politically safe funding for basic research. It produces real fruits too. GPS is one, and the most important is probably ARPANET, a legitimate parent of the internet. I would hazard a guess that the work and funding from DARPA accelerated the development of the modern internet by ~10 years. Earlier development of the internet had huge positive implications on the genuine wealth of our world--not just the wealth of the US, and it came directly from military spending.
If the general category "military spending" were cut and we wanted those external benefits to not die with it, the US would need to simultaneously fund politically vulnerable organizations such as NASA and the National Labs to offset for the losses in research. They are very technically effective, but NASA's money could go on the political chopping block at any election cycle and not recover for decades--just where it is now--whereas defense funded research is politically secure.
Re:I for one.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"demonization of things like guns that are also a form of power"
How so when the NRA is one of the nation's biggest lobbying groups and most of Congress is in their pocket? Soon they will push to allow prisoners to have guns.
Sorry, no. This is patently ridiculous.
Although, perhaps you meant "ex-convicts". I actually think that maybe they should be allowed to have guns. What happened to "you've served your time, now rejoin society as a regular, productive person"? Somewhere along the way we created this label of "ex-con" and used it to take away the rights of people unfortunate enough to land in jail.