Goliath with a Nuke

Friday, May. 06, 1966
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Dirigibles still evoke vivid memories of disaster—the stunning tragedies of the 1930s that destroyed Germany's Hindenburg, Britain's R-101, and America's Akron and Macon, and caused great loss of life.

Despite that ghastly record, dirigibles may yet stage a comeback. With modern technology, says Boston University Aeronautical Engineer Francis Morse, they can be made as sturdy and safe as airplanes. Writing in Britain's New Scientist, Morse proposes a nuclear-powered, helium-buoyed craft that would not only restore public confidence in the dirigible but would also compete economically in the jet age.

Ocean-Liner Luxury. The 980-ft.-long propeller-driven ship would be larger than any dirigible ever built and have a useful lift of 300,000 Ibs. Even so, it could be propelled at more than 100 m.p.h. by reactor-powered turbines that deliver only 6,000 h.p.—compared with the more than 40,000 h.p. needed to power a Boeing 707 jet. Such a reactor is already available; together with its shielding and turbines, it would weigh about 120,000 Ibs., substantially less than the weight of fuel alone needed for a long journey by a conventionally powered airship.

With its remaining payload capacity of 180,000 Ibs., the nuclear dirigible could carry 400 passengers and a crew of 95. It would have staterooms with private baths, a movie theater, cocktail lounge, and a dining room seating 200. Using nuclear fuel, the goliath of the skies could cruise endlessly around the world, picking up and disembarking passengers with an 18-place shuttle plane that would have its own hangar amidships. An all-cargo version of the dirigible could fly 150 compact cars across the Atlantic in 40 hours at a cost of about $140 per vehicle.

To avoid the fatal weaknesses of earlier dirigibles, Morse's airship would be constructed of high-strength alloys of titanium and aluminum, the outer covering of durable nylon fabric. Radar and improved meteorological forecasting would enable the ship to avoid severe storms. The use of nonflammable helium for buoyancy and nuclear instead of chemical fuel for propulsion would virtually eliminate the danger of fire and explosion.

More Lift, Less Drag. The nuclear airship's size—177 ft. longer and 37 ft. greater in diameter than the Hindenburg—would give it an added advantage over even the largest of the old dirigibles, which Morse says were "just at the threshold of efficient performance." Doubling the length of a dirigible, for example, increases its weight four times, but provides an eightfold increase in lift.

Morse and his Boston University colleagues see no other practical way of achieving nuclear-powered flight in the near future. Though scientists and engineers have worked on plans for nuclear airplanes for more than a decade, they have yet to get off the drawing boards—let alone into the air. The big problems are weight and radiation hazard. A reactor big enough to power a 335,000-lb. 707 jet, for example, would require 225,000 Ibs. of radiation shielding to protect passengers—considerably more than the plane could lift. In the event of a crash, the high impact speed of the plane would almost certainly shatter the reactor, exposing anyone in the vicinity to radiation.