Mind-Warping Vehicles That Could Have Been Contenders

Yes, cars.
From the company that gave you the Pinto. A car which exploded on contact.

The Ford Nucleon.:cool: Capable of taking out small towns in a single crash.
1958_ford_nucleon.jpg
 
In all seriousness, if you or I can come up with an idea for something to stick a nuclear reactor in, I guarantee you somebody proposed it in the 50s or, at the latest, 60s. No matter how ridiculous, someone will have at least proposed it and published a paper on it. Nuclear-powered trains, airplanes, cruise missiles, ICBMs, tanks, cars.

Yes, cars. There were several papers published on the subject, which mostly came to the conclusion "this is a really bad idea." It's not just the safety, you see, although God knows that would be enough - it's also the incredible weight of the radiation shielding, the unbelievable cost of a miniaturized nuclear engine, and the fact that, to get it that small, it would have to run on weapons-grade fissiles. (And even then, I'm not sure if they ever built a reactor small enough that could put out enough power.) Imagine that tooling around the suburbs!

in the early days radioactive stuff was used for anything as miracle stuff, like radium water, radium suppositories etc.

as for nuclear powered cars...hmmm could you imagine people trying to tinker with it to make it produce more power (just like they try to boost normal cars). that could produce a few 'incidents'
would give a whole new meaning to a hotrod lol
 
I've heard from at least two different places that someone thought it would be a good idea to have a nuclear powered vaccum cleaner:eek:
Think it was some physics prof from Harvard.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Oh, come on, six pages, and no Martin P6M? A Strategic Bomber Seaplane capable of mach 0.9 on the deck, with inch thick skin on the wingroots as part of the structure to keep it from flying apart. If they had swapped out the engines (say with the Orenda Iroquois, tweaked to better handle salt ingestion,) modified the wings to reduce the compressibility effects at low level flight above mach 0.8, and not gotten fucked over by the Navy brass to save the carriers, it would have likely developed into the premier Maritime strike aircraft until the introduction of the Tu-22M, especially if you could shoe-horn a decent weapons system in there, like say, a Terrier BT-3A(N) modified for anti-ship work, or a longer-range Genie, it'd have been a great counter for soviet fleets.
 
LOL! Just what exactly is the point of building a nuclear powered vacuum cleaner?

There isn't one, as far as I'm aware. But, you know, it was the 50s. Companies did things like the Nucleon and the nuclear vacuum cleaner as publicity stunts, to show they were futuristic and science-y.

If you're a fan of atompunk, you can find really awesome stuff in old Newsweek ads and the like with these sorts of things, companies bragging about how futuristic they are. For example, apparently Seagrams' Whiskey is the drink of the future; who knew? My favorites, though, are the chemical and steel companies buying full-page color ads in popular magazines for no apparent reason. Union Carbide, in particular, had some amazing ads... And one, in retrospect, very unfortunate ad, about their new factory in Bhopal...
 
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I can't believe I forgot this one! The Polyus orbiting battle station:

pole%2064.gif


Polyus was part of the Soviet response to the American SDI program. It was put together in a massive rush between 1985 and 1986 - ordinarily a project like this would take a minimum of five years to develop, so they had to combine available components that were surplus from other projects. The core of the platform was a surplus TKS logistics spacecraft mated to a mockup of the Skif-D platform, and it also included components from Buran and other vehicles.

There's still some uncertainty as to what it actually carried, but current belief is the armament might have included a barium cloud launcher (for diffusing particle beams), an autocannon for defense, a nuclear mine launcher, and possibly even a 1 MW CO2 laser. Sensors included an optical sighting system and RADAR. The platform was coated with black paint for optical stealth, and may also have been covered with radar-absorbing material.

Polyus was intended as a testbed for an orbital weapons platform - perhaps even an orbital strike platform. The Soviets were terribly worried that SDI and other American programs were cover for developing an orbital first strike capability, to hit Soviet missile installations from orbit without warning. Launch of the Polyus would have allowed them to both test the ASAT weapons on board, and to see if they could track a nuclear weapons platform in orbit.

polyus.jpg


The Soviets shot this thing into space on May 15 1987 (presumably without the nukes) - only for a computer error to send it crashing into the ocean, when retrorockets fired to rotate it 360 degrees instead of 180 degrees. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and the rest is history.
 
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