NationStates Jolt Archive

The Air ministery of Europe and Eurasia is proud to unveil the next generation of fighter aircraft to the world

http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/future/avpro-foas1_002.jpg

The NMRA-1 is the first of a new class of aircraft powered by a revolutionary new Hafnium based turbine power plant. This breakthrough in nuclear technology gives the NMRA-1 almost unlimited range and endurance and a cruising speed in excess of mach 2 with a top speed of mach 3.5.

This aircraft is also capable of many different styles of weapon loads, it can go on light bombing, interception, recon or air superiority missions.

This aircraft is available in manned and unmanned versions but for the time being we will only be selling the manned versions to other countries as the unmanned version would have a prohibitably expensive retail price.

The aircraft costs 25 million US dollars each, you get one free if you do your own math.

I would like to order none. That comes to $0. I claim my free fighter for doing my own math.

Jake Schoenberg, teh Ministry of Defense, says "d00d, why aren't you selling teh unmanned ones? We have a 121.5 billion military budget!"


We'll take 200.


5 billion wired.

PIcaRDMPCia would like to purchase not the fighter itself but the design plans; is this acceptable? We are offering 40 million USD for the plans.
-Adam Adamo, Finance Minister

OOC: A nuclear reactor in a 25m dollar fighter plane? Right...

OOC: A nuclear reactor in a 25m dollar fighter plane? Right...

Agreed.

Not to mention - in using this aircraft for "home defense" you'd risk radioactive fallout spread across your entire nation should one or more be shot down.

Arr mateys! This be a great idea! Nobody dares shoot 'em down fer fear the reactor'll destroy their nayshun! Yer fighters're invicible!
If only I didn't be in space, I'd be buying yer craft.
Arr, on second thoughts, no I wouldn't.

Arr, this be a post by Cap'n Gow o' the Redball Pirates; Makin' the world a more Arrid place.

Not to mention - in using this aircraft for "home defense" you'd risk radioactive fallout spread across your entire nation should one or more be shot down.

I'm fairly sure that only occurs in one type of nuclear turbine engine, whereas the other is much cleaner, but heavier and therefore requires a larger chassis.

Question.... Why would the top speed be any different from the top cruising speed? A normal jet uses "afterburners" by dumping raw fuel into the engine's exhaust, hence the word afterburner, the huge fuel consumption, and the increased speed. In a nuclear powered anything, the fuel is not combustible.

Question.... Why would the top speed be any different from the top cruising speed? A normal jet uses "afterburners" by dumping raw fuel into the engine's exhaust, hence the word afterburner, the huge fuel consumption, and the increased speed. In a nuclear powered anything, the fuel is not combustible.

I have to concur a little with this person. :) Considering that nuclear turbines would be best of long-duration aircraft, I always fancied them on long-range Strategic Bombers - gives you virtually limitless range both in time and distance, within limits of the crew of course.

An unmanned bomber, however... :D

Question.... Why would the top speed be any different from the top cruising speed? A normal jet uses "afterburners" by dumping raw fuel into the engine's exhaust, hence the word afterburner, the huge fuel consumption, and the increased speed. In a nuclear powered anything, the fuel is not combustible.

The top speed/top criusing speed is an issue that affects just about any type of vehicle in exitance from hrose drawn carts to million ton super dreadnaughts.

gernerally a top speed is only sustainable for short eriods without damaging the vehicle some how (vibration, heat etc) while the max criuse tends to be the max speed at which oeprations are still economical enough for logn distance use.

The horse cart provides a good illustration, you can whip bill the hrose and he will galop but eventually he will die when you do that but elt him plod alogn at his own pace and he will last more or less forever (or a natural horse lifespan).

Cax: You have to pay if you order only one, you get a free extra fighter if you do your own math, so no sale. :rolleyes:

TheInterwebGame: Money recieved, 501 planes on their way

PIcaRDMPCia: We can give you airframe and avionic systems schematics, these are very advanced anyway so they cost 200 million dollars all up, the engine blueprints are still very much classified so they are not for sale, i'm afraid.

Chellis, Wolfish, Redball: I see that you have raised concerns about our new engine and its radioactive core, I assure you that the Hafnium core in all of the engines is completely covered in an amorphous titanium-lead alloy that is both lightweight and is sure to never break, even in a crash, its like a black box so you have nothing to worry about.

Markers Pride: Our engines also have an afterburner of sorts, to increase speed there is a device that pumps a chemical reactant into the heat exchange chamber to quicken air ignition and thereby increase thrust.

Christophskiffer: Wait around, our engineers are working on the NSB-1 strateigic bomber as we speak.

Crookfur: A good explination, though only half right, read my reply to Markers Pride for more info.

Thanks for the comments everybody, keep those order coming :)

Cax: You have to pay if you order only one, you get a free extra fighter if you do your own math, so no sale. :rolleyes:

TheInterwebGame: Money recieved, 501 planes on their way

PIcaRDMPCia: We can give you airframe and avionic systems schematics, these are very advanced anyway so they cost 200 million dollars all up, the engine blueprints are still very much classified so they are not for sale, i'm afraid.

Chellis, Wolfish, Redball: I see that you have raised concerns about our new engine and its radioactive core, I assure you that the Hafnium core in all of the engines is completely covered in an amorphous titanium-lead alloy that is both lightweight and is sure to never break, even in a crash, its like a black box so you have nothing to worry about.

Markers Pride: Our engines also have an afterburner of sorts, to increase speed there is a device that pumps a chemical reactant into the heat exchange chamber to quicken air ignition and thereby increase thrust.

Christophskiffer: Wait around, our engineers are working on the NSB-1 strateigic bomber as we speak.

Crookfur: A good explination, though only half right, read my reply to Markers Pride for more info.

Thanks for the comments everybody, keep those order coming :)


I was actually commenting on the price, and being able to fit a nuclear reactor in a craft as small as a fighter. Also, I find the "unable to break" material laughable at best...

Chellis, the Hafnium cores in the aircrafts engines are very compact, and as for the unbreakable comment of course it is possible to break it, it is just extremely hard to, not even the force of a head on crash should break it, plus we have put other safety measures in the aircraft (an emergency secondary radiation shield for one) to make sure that the engines will never leak gamma rays, alright.

Due to its small, yet increasing population, for the moment, the Waffle-loving Kirby Empire would like to order one jet. at the rate of $25,000,000:1, the total would amount to $25,000,000. We would like to request the the free jet, as clearly stated in the offer, we did our own math.

(OOC: Not that I'll ignore them in an rp, but it would be very difficult to get nuclear powered craft up to high speeds because they don't have the advantage fueled engines do: hot expanding gasses. With a nuclear power source, all the pushing work must be done on regular air with lots of compressors. Fueled engines have the little advantage of being able to exploit heat and pressure to accelerate air instead of using mechanical systems. Its basically the same reason railguns aren't as efficient as guns, at some point they could exceed them in speed but the power required is enormous. Nuclear engines are ideally suited to long loiter time, subsonic-low mach speeds. Sure they store more power, and they may be able to release it faster(I don't know), but its all in how the power can be applied.)

Waffle-loving Kirbys: Money confirmed, jets sent

bump

We would like production rights to the airframe. That is it.

Clearly, (as you have stated) Your QNF engines are not as advanced.. as they still use radioactive materials. We'll also use our own Avionics, thanks. But we would like one of the nuclear ones, just to compare.

Ok, QNF works via an X-Ray machine, one might find at a hospital. This is used on the Halfnium core (which is much less radioactive than Uranium. It won't harm you.) and then it heats the air or whatever, cause I can't quite remember. But the general idea is, is that ITS NOT A BLOODY PEBBLEBED REACTOR SYSTEM IN THE AIR.

Any time now...

ooc: Sorry for the wait Artitsa, a mans gotta sleep you know

ic: Airframe schematics cost 50 million and a single engine will set you back around 7 million, order confirmed.

Oh, I forgot you also wanted production rights, silly me :rolleyes:

There is an 87 million dollar licensing fee as well as a 5 million dollar royalty per aircraft produced. You also need to sign contracts with the air ministery and the ministery of industrial administation agreeing to:

1.Never sell the planes to other nations
2.Never fly them over E&E airspace with malicious intent (spy recon, bombing etc.)

You will recieve all of this as soon as we have recieved payment.

Yes, we promise to never sell your plane, or fly it over your airspace. However, we will not pay $5 Million per aircraft in Royalties. All we are buying is the schematics to the airframe.

So, in summary:

- Production Rights to the NMRA-1 Airframe for $90 Million (possibly $100 Million)

- One, NMRA-1 UCAV aircraft with QNF engine and full avionics, and etc.

How do you turn it off?

We will cut out the royalties for an extra 10 million dollars.

And the test plane will have to be the manned version, we are not giving the UAV version to anyone as yet (experimental processor unit, it's highly classified)

Other than that we are happy with your proposal, plans and plane sent on confirmation of payment.

Confirmation will not come without the UAV. We assure you, anything we have is far more advanced than what you are working on. The purpose of these tests is to see how well this plane can hold up in a dogfight, vs. our revised copy. Its not the same when you have a pilot who can only take 8g's.

How do you turn it off?

LMFAO

they don't they just keep flying on and on and on (unmanned no doubt you, because even the USAF doesn't have enough 'go pills' for infinite flight)

still its a nice design and an interesting idea

fa18 has 20 maintenaince hours to every flight hour and its one of the most efficient to maintain aircraft designed.

still it with an on board reactor, gotta stack up those heat seakers :D

[Okay, there seem to be some fairly serious misconceptions about what the metastable form of Hafnium is and how its reactors work.

First of all, let's get this straight. Hafnium-178m2 only emits gamma rays. Furthermore, the only time it does thiis is when it is being stimulated into doing so, any other time and it is a very mindly radioactive element, much like Uranium and Plutonium when they haven't been run through reactors of their own.

Quantum Nucleonic Reactors work by using either x-rays or photons to stimulate the Hafnium into an accelerated half-life, which causes the Hafnium to emit energy in the form of gamma rays. Obviously I don't have access to the DoD plans for their Hafnium reactor, but there have been no indications that it could/would not work.]

Artitsa, we are not simply going to hand over one of the most advanced planes our scientists have come up with to date just because you say that you have better equipment. You are going to have to pony up some serious cash to get us to sell a NMRA-1 UAV prototype.

No offence :D

and what do you consider "Serious Cash"

upwards of 200 million dollars

OOC:
I personally do not like the idea of nuclear-powered fighters in MT for three main reasons:
Nuclear reactors are for long-durations, as they are used with ships that are almost always active. Fighters, dispite even heavyw ar times, are not nearly as active.
Nuclear reactors are extremely dangerous, expecially if stressed enough to cause any type of malfunction that could risk the pilot's own life. A single pilot, life, is more important than your whole airforce.
I have seen and have read articles about nuclear reactors in airliners as a test bed form the Raptor's own testing plane, the Catfish (can't remember the exact numbers to its name at the moment), has an experimental nuclear reactor (can't remember off the top of my head the type either) for future airlines but most of it is going 50/50, not 60/40 or higher.

Personally, I have a Long-Range Active Bomber being designned, the Areospike, that would constantly be in the air none stop in case of a homeland attack. It will have a single nuclear reactor the size of a small nuclear-powered naval ship but would be a flying wing (my favorite in bombers next to an Air Spike) and designned much like a heavily modified B-2 (simular to my TyH-B5 Dream Strategic Bomber).
If you want to go the nuclear-powered aircraft route and stay within 2010 limits, try airliners and big or extremely uberactive bombers for efficancy.]

Truitt, you misunderstand the system that I am using in my aircraft. It is not a nuclear fission reactor utilising Uranium but a quantum nucleonic system utilising Hafnium as a power source. Go to google and type in "Hafnium reactors" or something to that effect and you will see what I am talking about. Quantum nucleonic systems are much lighter and more compact than fission reactors and unlike those reactors they can be shut down by simply turning of the X-ray catalyst to the nucleonic reaction, when the engines are shut down they are very low on radiation and are completely safe.

Truitt you go ahead and use Nuclear Reactors... thats just stupid.

Anyways, we are prepared to wire $200 Million.

Alright, we'll sell you a UAV version prototype, just don't tell anybody I sold you one ;)

Done and Done.

bump

I was wondering if anyone realized that the process has not been repeated under labratory conditions IRL, and thus has not been proven to actually work. One passed test is not sufficient falsification

At least I think it hasn't. If I'm wrong, please let me know, because I can think of some interesting applications myself.

I think that they haven't repeated the effect in many of the attempts because it is hard to get the exact isomer of Hafnium correct, we may know the correct isomer but actually finding it or synthesising it is easier said than done.

Hafnium? Isomer decay is under serious skepticism from most modern scientists. But then, who am I to judge?

I was wondering if anyone realized that the process has not been repeated under labratory conditions IRL, and thus has not been proven to actually work. One passed test is not sufficient falsification

At least I think it hasn't. If I'm wrong, please let me know, because I can think of some interesting applications myself.

You're right, don't worry.

The thing is, when labs have tried to repeat the original tests, they used a method that had only been predicted to work under quantum physics.

Original = Close-range x-ray bombardment
Other labs = Accelerated photon bombardment

Also, FYI, the original test did take place in a lab. The lab is sneered at because it isn't some multi-million dollar facility like what CERN would use.

Never said the origional test didn't take place in a lab. I said it hadn't been repeated in a lab.

Accelerated photon eh... don't all photons travel at the same speed?... unless you meant a photon with a lot of energy and a short wavelength, otherwise known as a x-ray.

And regardless of whether it was performed incorrectly, it hasn't been repeated. I'm not saying it won't be, but it hasn't been. And using technology who's theories haven't even been proven seems like futuretech to me.

Maybe, but I guarente you are using something that isn't fully proven yet.

First of all, the actual peice of technology need not be proven to work, but the theory behind it must. Second, since my nation is working with 1890s steam tech, I doubt anything we use is unproven.

The Confederacy of Lachenburg would be quite interested in purchasing 100 of your fine aircraft. 2.5 billion USD will be wired to your nation's treasury, once the order has been confirmed

Manfred Albetung
Direktor of Defense
Confederacy of Lachenburg