The OSI has one. If course it is a secret and used to fight the Guild of Calamitous Intent

Sorry, those are just some of the big technical issues that come up with a few seconds of thought, as far as "could we actually do this now." And the answer is...no way in hell.

But working on the underlying technology to develop a plasma-type engine--working on the individual engineering problems that stand in the way of that, putting them on "the list" if they're not already on it--that is a good idea.

Because that engine will be useful eventually for all kinds of things, and it removes a lot of the constraints on what we can use as rocket fuel.

TV's Vinnie: Now see the little plane REALLY at the bottom?

LOL.

first thing I thought of was this classic superman cartoon.

Link

Flying aircraft carrier

Ed Finnerty: They'd be unstoppable because there is no such thing as an air torpedo.

The first cruise missiles were actually unmanned airplanes called in fact Air Torpedos.

Dalek Caan's doomed mistress: And this is how you know someone had a deadline to meet, and went and saw Avengers instead.

More like a brilliant staffer figured out how to not only justify going to see the movie instead of going in to work Friday, but got his job to pay for the tickets and popcorn

Consider how much fuel it takes to keep a 747 airborne, they weigh a million pounds.

Scale that up to a nimitiz class carrier. You are talking the output of a couple of BIG nuke plants just to lift that thing.

I love science fiction but that idea is just dumber than dumb. Until we start to take space travel seriously and design ourselves out of chemical rockets, nothing like this will ever be practical. We have to get the price of mass to orbit down by at least two orders of magnitude before anything like this will happen.

Any such system would have of necessity be orbit to surface and would not direct return to orbit - you would 'launch' something, they would do what you needed, then would land on earth - unless you have unlimited energy, such orbital changes are too fuel inefficient.

What will happen will be a type of space ICBM - un-manned bomb-rockets in LEO orbits - lots of them so that any trouble spot can be eliminated in minutes. Heck, you don't even really need a 'bomb' per-se, although given the price of mass to orbit, it's still cheaper to lift a warhead than 100 ton of concrete for a kinetic kill device.

The Avengers one reminded me a Dr. Who episode:

Things we need to make zeppelins viable again:

1) Fusion power (massive quantities of power, plus self-generating helium to sustain the ship when damaged)
2) Point defense lasers & rail guns (USN's working on both of these)
3) A lightweight outer lining that can withstand small and mid-sized projectiles, like kevlar on steroids

Fill the interior with a couple hundred drones and have a field day.

Munitions crew attaching the aircraft to the flying aircraft carrier:



/ i used to do that

Fuggin Bizzy: our KISS fighters from the '70s are doing all the heavy lifting.

Yeah, it's not like the first F-14 blew all it's hydraulics and crashed on it's first test flight.

Oh wait, it did.

dukeblue219: Considering that we can launch bombers from Louisiana to bomb Iraq and then return, why do we need a flying aircraft carrier?

Fatigue, mainly. Sitting in a cockpit for over 24 hours straight is done all the time and you certainly want to train for it, but honestly unless the CO is a complete Tom Clancy fanboi dumbass it's not considered ideal. For all the crap the USAF gets about being the "Chair Force", and much of it is deserved, you don't want someone operating equipment worth tens to hundreds of millions of dollars going all dudebro over sleep deprivation. War is about resources, so to impose the same endurance expectations as an infantry unit (where, worst-case, a serviceable napping surface is often 6 feet away or less and the equipment offset for a casualty is what he's carrying) to a pilot (where the ground is much farther away and the equipment a tad more pricey) is the kind of pants-on-head stupid that would cause Sun Tzu to facepalm in his grave. As a case study, IIRC the Brits lost a lot of pilots in WW2 where they'd survive dogfights over the English Channel and then crash into the water from exhaustion when the adrenaline rush wore off. Some of the bigger bombers (B-2, B-52) have basic amenities like room to move around, a small toilet and even a place to sleep. Fighter pilots can consume what fits in a pocket, use daipers and have to gut out just about everything else.

tomWright: But they all still crashed in storms. LTA are generally not feasible except for limited situations, like selling beer advertising over sporting events. As cool as they can be, they are niche aircraft at best. /Failed my GED in aeronautical engineering, so I may be wrong

Modern technology can get LTA up to 100,000 feet; they can fly over most storms these days and may be out of the range of the most advanced anti-aircraft missiles (I don't know, there's little to no [non-classified] data on AAMs or SAMs trying to shoot a target that high up as most advanced aircraft top out at about 2/3 of that). However, assuming you can scale that technology to small carrier size, you've got another problem. At that altitude there's no practical way to have pilots enter or exit their aircraft -- which completely defeats the purpose of transporting them separately. Go much lower, though, and you're a slow-moving target with a radar signature bigger than your mom. And the more you want to carry and the higher up you want to go, the more lifting gas you need.

I daresay LTA is much more reliable these days IF you build 'em right, but a simple concept is a long way from being a tactically advantageous weapon.

Welcome to New Cap City

Look, I LOVED that movie, but the sky carrier was one of the dumber parts (how the President seems to have no say in the launching of a nuclear weapon was the dumbest.) The only advantage I can think of is that the carrier would no longer need to go around continents anymore, and the sheer cost, effort, and fuel consumption required to design, build and deploy such a ship would simply not be worth it.

Iron Felix: [media.giantbomb.com image 300x124]

loved wing commander! what ever happened to kickass space fighter simulators anyway?

bmwericus: Scale that up to a nimitiz class carrier. You are talking the output of a couple of BIG nuke plants just to lift that thing.

Nuclear powered engines don't work. We tried it with bombers in the early atomic era before in flight refueling was practical.

GE made a direct drive nuclear engine, where air was sucked into the reactor, and shot out the back after being superheated. It worked, but the shielding would break down and spew heavy radiation out the tailpipe. It was later considered for but never used in a cruise missile designed to be a WMD. Just have the thing circle your target spewing radiation. No need for a bomb at all.

Pratt and Whitney made an indirect Nuclear engine, which was safer and didn't spew radiation out the back, but never produced enough power. to get itself airborne, let alone itself, a reactor, the shielding, and an airplane.

There were some 40 test flights of a bomber with a nuclear reactor in it. just to see if they could do it without killing the crew. The Americans managed it, but never got the nuclear engines working.

The Russian's on the other hand, made a direct drive nuclear bomber, didn't include crew shielding, and managed to get it to fly. Only 2 of the crew of 5 lived. It was slow, a deathtrap, and really them just playing catch up with the USA.

The ICBM put the end to these programs. That and the discovery that there was no missile gap, or bomber gap, towards the end of the cold war.

LoneWolf343: Look, I LOVED that movie, but the sky carrier was one of the dumber parts (how the President seems to have no say in the launching of a nuclear weapon was the dumbest.) The only advantage I can think of is that the carrier would no longer need to go around continents anymore, and the sheer cost, effort, and fuel consumption required to design, build and deploy such a ship would simply not be worth it.

Course, if Arc reactors were a possibility....


Hell, use thorium reactors. They're legit, and doesn't have that pesky nuclear explosion issue that uranium reactors have.

Dream big, oh weapon system platform designers of the future. I'm still patiently waiting on my personal flying car.

wippit: Hell, use thorium reactors. They're legit, and doesn't have that pesky nuclear explosion issue that uranium reactors have.

They are still heavy and require shielding.

/US marines in charge of flying next to the bomber with an atomic reactor inside (in case it crashed and they had to cordon off the area) charmingly named themselves "The glow in the dark corps"

Lsherm: Persistent presence? An aircraft carrier is a floating support structure for a mini-air force. Flying bombers halfway across the planet takes time.

We can do a layered timeline attack quite effectively

Assuming NO carriers or missile ships in range:
12-18 hours - B1/B2/B-52 direct from CONUS (rotating A/C and crews, continue for a couple of days)
24 hours - Fighters direct from CONUS or Europe for air superiority
36-48 hours - carrier battle group in range
72 hours - ground attack in range (F-16/F-15E/A-10/Reaper)

Continue as needed
A flying aircraft carrier gives little benefit over keeping various regular bombers in the air, as we used to do. And it brings many, many problems.

I'm sure FlyNavy is busy working on this top secret project.

Misconduc: I'm sure FlyNavy is busy working on this top secret project.

I thought it was the Navy Force.
Or the Air Navy.
Or the flying seamen...

Dalek Caan's doomed mistress: And this is how you know someone had a deadline to meet, and went and saw Avengers instead.

As a former full-time journalist, I totally agree.

You could easily flood a large hull with water and then float boats in it! There's absolutely no technical hangup there. So why don't we ever see boats floating in boats? Because it's dumb. Dumb like a flying aircraft carrier.

dukeblue219: This provides a similar capability that's actually feasible:

[www.fas.org image 640x389]

Considering that we can launch bombers from Louisiana to bomb Iraq and then return, why do we need a flying aircraft carrier?

.......and considering that the oceans cover 70+% of the world's surface, why aren't floating carriers adequate?

plehar: You could easily flood a large hull with water and then float boats in it! There's absolutely no technical hangup there. So why don't we ever see boats floating in boats? Because it's dumb. Dumb like a flying aircraft carrier.

You don't know what a Well Deck is, do you...

HMS_Blinkin: dukeblue219: This provides a similar capability that's actually feasible:

[www.fas.org image 640x389]

Considering that we can launch bombers from Louisiana to bomb Iraq and then return, why do we need a flying aircraft carrier?

.......and considering that the oceans cover 70+% of the world's surface, why aren't floating carriers adequate?

Air travel is usually waster than water travel...

wippit: plehar: You could easily flood a large hull with water and then float boats in it! There's absolutely no technical hangup there. So why don't we ever see boats floating in boats? Because it's dumb. Dumb like a flying aircraft carrier.

You don't know what a Well Deck is, do you...

Bat Rastard. Beat me to it.

wambu: Aircraft carrier = first-strike nuclear target

If you want to go that big, you can't go big enough.
glass something something parking lot...

Dalek Caan's doomed mistress: And this is how you know someone had a deadline to meet, and went and saw Avengers instead.

And they have the intellectual capacity of a five year-old.

I call dibs on Protoss air power

Kinda late on the news eh ;) This was on MSNBC yesterday morning.

1975

Why bother when you have supersonic jets that could drop bombs in about three hours anywhere on the planets.