We need a new transport

[Admiral Valdemar]

It has been shown that heavy ack-ack does nothing to airships that are semi-rigid (and could still reach high altitude) the special polymer/nylon ballonets they use seal up as soon as a round hits them.

Airship Industries once did a test showing the safety of their normal blimps (Skyship 500 series) by literally firing SMG fire into the blimp. Even with hundreds of holes the amount of helium lost was minimal. It would literally take holes the size of basketballs before any real loss was seen.

In anycase, it seems many are not too well informed about the fact that despite all the bickering on whether they are a viable transport, the USAF and RAF are actually putting down plans to buy such craft for heavy transport, and they are considered more practical than standard aircraft.

Another thing, how many times have you seen a C-130 fly into heavy enemy fire and unload its cargo? I can tell you now that no sane pilot would try it (my dad having served most his RAF career on Fat Alberts). So saying an airship would be stupid because the pilot would for some reason go into frontlines and absorb enemy fire is ludicrous.

Like it or not, cargo airships are coming back in.

[Azeron]

Alright the orignal nuclear powered plane was a prop plane. A modern nuclear propulsion would involve bombarding fuel with nuetrons makeing t them super hot. The designs are really quite simply but the technology didn;t exist to make it practical. Thats why nasa recently annoucned that it beelcves the tech currently exists to develope such trhusters and get a good performance out of them. they are beelvied to be about 3x more effiecent than regular chemical engines, and are what Nasa really wants for the mission to mars, since it would cut the time to get there and back significantly as well as allow a greater amount of cargo.

Now Mr Fixed wing blimpie expert, you said that no bollon could go up that high. Well there soem people who actually do design this stuff who would disaggree with you on that. Just becasue something doesn't have a rocket on the back of it doesn't mean that its useless or can't be effective. Thats just tech level biogtry. Nothing to do with science or reality.

Now I am sorry to hear that people who subscribe to "Amrrica thinks its tops so it can;t be great because if you ignore every measureable way that america is better than our pisspoor crappy has been country, then you see america is just like us." So what if we sepnd 2 billion or 30 billion to develope a new uber tansport, its our money, and what we want to use. no pint in being jealous that your country could never afford such a thing, and could never develope it. Quite frankly building such a craft, would yeild tons of useable technologies, so its not like its all going to go into one plane. Its like missle defense, whoever can shoot down ICBM's reliably and inexpensively, can shoot down planes cheaply and infalliably. To the developers of the technology goes the rewards of its use and its offshoots.

You know what I hope happens, is that some islamic terrorist in Bhagdad gets a hold of some ICBM's adn shoots them off against europe becasue it can;t breah the US shield, while the Euros Scream for help to shoot down the missles, I hope the preisdent says, "screw you, you gave us all that crap about missle defense, you didn't prepare, its your bed now lie in it." And there goes europe just a bad memory.

Stupid hippie euros.

[Wicked Pilot]

It has been shown that heavy ack-ack does nothing to airships that are semi-rigid (and could still reach high altitude) the special polymer/nylon ballonets they use seal up as soon as a round hits them.

Airship Industries once did a test showing the safety of their normal blimps (Skyship 500 series) by literally firing SMG fire into the blimp. Even with hundreds of holes the amount of helium lost was minimal. It would literally take holes the size of basketballs before any real loss was seen.

So your saying that because it was demonstrated that an airship could survive SMG fire, it must be able to survive heavy AAA. Does the term "Leap of Logic" mean anything to you?

In anycase, it seems many are not too well informed about the fact that despite all the bickering on whether they are a viable transport, the USAF and RAF are actually putting down plans to buy such craft for heavy transport, and they are considered more practical than standard aircraft.

Why don't you enlighten us by citing your sources

Another thing, how many times have you seen a C-130 fly into heavy enemy fire and unload its cargo?

Afganistan, Somalia, and Vietnam come to mind.

I can tell you now that no sane pilot would try it

Of course no one wants to fly into fire, they do it bacause they have too. Don't you understand the difference?

So saying an airship would be stupid because the pilot would for some reason go into frontlines and absorb enemy fire is ludicrous.

This thread is for discussing tactical transports, not strategic ones. If you can't differentiate between tactical and strategic, then I suggest you ask your vaunted daddy.

[Wicked Pilot]

Now Mr Fixed wing blimpie expert, you said that no bollon could go up that high. Well there soem people who actually do design this stuff who would disaggree with you on that. Just becasue something doesn't have a rocket on the back of it doesn't mean that its useless or can't be effective. Thats just tech level biogtry. Nothing to do with science or reality.

What is your problem, are you mentalily impaired? Let me explain it to you again since you didn't get it the first time. Airships are rigid, they will not expand or contract. Unlike a baloon, an airship will not expand with the decrease in atmospheric pressure as it ascends. Therefore, it's density will remain constant as the density of the outside air decreases. The airship will then lose bouyance, and be unable to climb. I doubt an airship would even make it above FL 180, where the pressure is half that of sea level.

[Admiral Valdemar]

So your saying that because it was demonstrated that an airship could survive SMG fire, it must be able to survive heavy AAA. Does the term "Leap of Logic" mean anything to you?

Airships in WWI still took explosive shells in their skin. The point is moot, an explosive shell is still essentially the same today.

Why don't you enlighten us by citing your sources

http://www.technologyreview.com/article ... 080901.asp

A random site I came across now, I'll get better sources later.

Afganistan, Somalia, and Vietnam come to mind.

In heavy ack-ack and the like of fire you are talking about? Such a plane wouldn't survive unless it was not as heavy as you were implying before, in which case an airship would still work, but I digress. This is mainly a strategic transport though tactical airlifting can be done.

Of course no one wants to fly into fire, they do it bacause they have too. Don't you understand the difference?

Yes, and I also know that taking dangerous and stupid risks are also not needed. So we have the problem of whether it is worth flying into Tunguska and Crotale armed territories to pick up some troops.

This thread is for discussing tactical transports, not strategic ones. If you can't differentiate between tactical and strategic, then I suggest you ask your vaunted daddy.

Nice personal insults are not needed unless you really do have the mentality of a five year old. Also you never stated if you were a USAF pilot or not. If so then what airbase and squadron and aircraft?

In anycase, airships can be used as both tactical and strategic, just because it goes into the battlefield doesn't mean it is in immediate danger from AA defences.. If you didn't already know that airships are used for military applications today then I question your military knowledge.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Now Mr Fixed wing blimpie expert, you said that no bollon could go up that high. Well there soem people who actually do design this stuff who would disaggree with you on that. Just becasue something doesn't have a rocket on the back of it doesn't mean that its useless or can't be effective. Thats just tech level biogtry. Nothing to do with science or reality.

What is your problem, are you mentalily impaired? Let me explain it to you again since you didn't get it the first time. Airships are rigid, they will not expand or contract. Unlike a baloon, an airship will not expand with the decrease in atmospheric pressure as it ascends. Therefore, it's density will remain constant as the density of the outside air decreases. The airship will then lose bouyance, and be unable to climb. I doubt an airship would even make it above FL 180, where the pressure is half that of sea level.

Not true. Airships today have special inlet valves leading to ballonets inside that alter their size by taking in or expelling air. There is an aft vacuole and fore vacuole that can alter in size and thus change the density of the helium inside the envelope. The aft one for instance can be filled with air allowing the tail to sink and help the airship point upwards.

Older designs didn't incorporate this feature.

[Wicked Pilot]

This is the M-46 130-mm Towed Gun. It has a maximum range of 38km, or 24 miles. Hitting a C-130 at that range would be very difficult. The Herk comes in fast, very quiet, and can be hidden by trees or camo. A mile long airship however draws emense attention to itself, and can be seen for miles around. You wouldn't even need spotters to hit it. If you were to bring down an airship near a battle zone, you'd have to make sure that the surrounding 45 hundred square kilometers, or 18 hundred square miles is devoid of these guns. In the desert that's possible, in heavy forest think again.

[Admiral Piett]

[quote="Azeron"]Alright the orignal nuclear powered plane was a prop plane. A modern nuclear propulsion would involve bombarding fuel with nuetrons makeing t them super hot. The designs are really quite simply but the technology didn;t exist to make it practical. Thats why nasa recently annoucned that it beelcves the tech currently exists to develope such trhusters and get a good performance out of them. they are beelvied to be about 3x more effiecent than regular chemical engines, and are what Nasa really wants for the mission to mars, since it would cut the time to get there and back significantly as well as allow a greater amount of cargo.

The concept for the nuclear bomber that I saw used the reactor
to power a sort of reaction engine.I am not sure of the mechanism but I have never heard about propellers,albeit I might have missed some concept designs.
Of course the technology for a nuclear aircraft IS here,the same for a nuclear propelled space ships,but this is not the true problem.The problem is that if one of that aircraft crashes,and one will crash sooner or later,you will find yourselves with a f***** Chernobyil behind the corner.Understood?
A space ship travel in space,so there is not this problem.At the worst one of the shuttles carrying in orbit the nuclear reactors for the spaceships could crash,but it is not likely.If you build many tens of nuclear propelled aircrafts one or more will surely fall sooner or later.I do not try to speak about maintenance problems,costs and so on because you do not simply understand them.

Now I am sorry to hear that people who subscribe to "Amrrica thinks its tops so it can;t be great because if you ignore every measureable way that america is better than our pisspoor crappy has been country, then you see america is just like us." So what if we sepnd 2 billion or 30 billion to develope a new uber tansport, its our money, and what we want to use. no pint in being jealous that your country could never afford such a thing, and could never develope it. Quite frankly building such a craft, would yeild tons of useable technologies, so its not like its all going to go into one plane. Its like missle defense, whoever can shoot down ICBM's reliably and inexpensively, can shoot down planes cheaply and infalliably. To the developers of the technology goes the rewards of its use and its offshoots.

If you want spend 20 billions of dollars for air transports it is better to use them to buy C17s and similar stuff.Airships are an option,albeit a mile long one is a bit too much.It may suffer from structural weaknesses,but I am not an expert.Several airships 300-400 meters long should be more practical.

You know what I hope happens, is that some islamic terrorist in Bhagdad gets a hold of some ICBM's adn shoots them off against europe becasue it can;t breah the US shield, while the Euros Scream for help to shoot down the missles, I hope the preisdent says, "screw you, you gave us all that crap about missle defense, you didn't prepare, its your bed now lie in it." And there goes europe just a bad memory.

Well,when some terrorist will put an atomic bomb in the baggage of his car and will park it in front of Azeron's house I will laugh.

[Admiral Piett]

Alright the orignal nuclear powered plane was a prop plane. A modern nuclear propulsion would involve bombarding fuel with nuetrons makeing t them super hot. The designs are really quite simply but the technology didn;t exist to make it practical. Thats why nasa recently annoucned that it beelcves the tech currently exists to develope such trhusters and get a good performance out of them. they are beelvied to be about 3x more effiecent than regular chemical engines, and are what Nasa really wants for the mission to mars, since it would cut the time to get there and back significantly as well as allow a greater amount of cargo.

The concept for the nuclear bomber that I saw used the reactor
to power a sort of reaction engine.I am not sure of the mechanism but I have never heard about propellers,albeit I might have missed some concept designs.
Of course the technology for a nuclear aircraft IS here,the same for a nuclear propelled space ships,but this is not the true problem.The problem is that if one of that aircraft crashes,and one will crash sooner or later,you will find yourselves with a f***** Chernobyil behind the corner.Understood?
A space ship travel in space,so there is not this problem.At the worst one of the shuttles carrying in orbit the nuclear reactors for the spaceships could crash,but it is not likely.If you build many tens of nuclear propelled aircrafts one or more will surely fall sooner or later.I do not try to speak about maintenance problems,costs and so on because you do not simply understand them.

Now I am sorry to hear that people who subscribe to "Amrrica thinks its tops so it can;t be great because if you ignore every measureable way that america is better than our pisspoor crappy has been country, then you see america is just like us." So what if we sepnd 2 billion or 30 billion to develope a new uber tansport, its our money, and what we want to use. no pint in being jealous that your country could never afford such a thing, and could never develope it. Quite frankly building such a craft, would yeild tons of useable technologies, so its not like its all going to go into one plane. Its like missle defense, whoever can shoot down ICBM's reliably and inexpensively, can shoot down planes cheaply and infalliably. To the developers of the technology goes the rewards of its use and its offshoots.

If you want spend 20 billions of dollars for air transports it is better to use them to buy C17s and similar stuff.Airships are an option,albeit a mile long one is a bit too much.It may suffer from structural weaknesses,but I am not an expert.Several airships 300-400 meters long should be more practical.Of course you can use airships only in a secured area.

You know what I hope happens, is that some islamic terrorist in Bhagdad gets a hold of some ICBM's adn shoots them off against europe becasue it can;t breah the US shield, while the Euros Scream for help to shoot down the missles, I hope the preisdent says, "screw you, you gave us all that crap about missle defense, you didn't prepare, its your bed now lie in it." And there goes europe just a bad memory.

Well,when some terrorist will put an atomic bomb in the baggage of his car and will park it in front of Azeron's house I will laugh.

[Sea Skimmer]

Funny you should bring up the M-46 rifle…

You see, that gun was first designed and mounted on Soviet destroyers in the 1930s, as a dual-purpose weapon.
In the 1950s they decide to convert it to land use. One form was the M-46 long-range rifle. The other was the KS-19 heavy anti aircraft gun, which entered service in 1955. It is the largest piece of AAA that ever entered wide spread service, Japan built seven 150mm weapons of unknown performance.

Even it could only reach up to about 41,000 feet maximum, firing straight up at 90 degrees. The effective ceiling is more like 30,000 feet. Frankly, no heavy AAA piece is going to be able to reach this transport.

It doesn't need sub orbital height; 65,000 feet would put it out of range of 95% of the world air defense systems.


As for artillery hitting it while landing. I don’t think any one is proposing assault landings with it. Anyway, those same guns could easily deny any airstrip to conventional transport lanes. Due to its ability to hover, this airship could unload anywhere.

Landing sites for C-130s are easy enough to scout and cover, its capabilities are well known. And you don’t have to worry about it unloading heavy armor. Those of the C-17 are also well known.

Any competent commander could have all locations within his area of responsibility pre plotted in a few hours.

Hitting a landing C-130 really even needed, though the M-46s accuracy is sufficient for the job, its shells blast radius are within the margin of error at all ranges. Just open up and pound the strip at a few points along its length with about 1 RPM.

The airship at least could haul along a payload of JDAM's to kill threatening artillery and JSOW and extended range HARM's to suppress air defenses, should you want to make a landing under fire.

If the area has heavy forest, how many landing grounds for fixed wing do you expect to find? The same trees that conceal your guns make landing planes kind of hard. The airship could just drop a daisy cutter, and then lower a ramp while hovering.


But really, why all the obsession with landing this thing under fire?????? Everything that can harm it will be just, if not more effective against transport aircraft.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The airforces of the world that intend to use future heavy lifters based on new airship tech have also taken into accoun the possibility of laser based CIWS that could give some protection for little weight, but this tech is still being made.

In anycase, heavy lifters like these need to be protected like any cargo craft, be it a plane or airship or rotary winged craft, they all have to land eventually. The ideal bet is to secure the area first, naturally.

[Azeron]

Adminral Piet, Chyrnobal could only happen in the soviet union. It would not happen in this case becasue the type and amount of nuclear material and how it was being used would be different. And there is design consideration. the gas coming out would not be radioactive or have residue of it, just really superheated fuel, or whatever they use. Quite frankly I think its about time we looked at nuclear propulsion for even civilian flights. I think its the tech that could change allot of things for the better.

Yes the plane used electirc engine properllers.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Adminral Piet, Chyrnobal could only happen in the soviet union. It would not happen in this case becasue the type and amount of nuclear material and how it was being used would be different. And there is design consideration. the gas coming out would not be radioactive or have residue of it, just really superheated fuel, or whatever they use. Quite frankly I think its about time we looked at nuclear propulsion for even civilian flights. I think its the tech that could change allot of things for the better.

Yes the plane used electirc engine properllers.

Do you know how much a fission reactor weighs? Do you know how much shielding you will need to make it safe?

Do you even know how expensive it will be to convert airliners to this magical drive you pulled out of your arse?

Because quite frankly, if it was feasible now and inexpensive then every airline would have it now. Hell, what abou the scramjet being developed now? Even though it works, it may be 40 years before we have a decent hypersonic liner like the BAe HOTOL.

[Azeron]

there is nothing magical about it. Its something people have been working on and off for 5 decades, seeing if the technology supported it. They seem pretty enthused about it know, while as before it was more of a pipe dream. They could get it to work, but it wasn't as good as they hoped it would be. But we know allot more about reactors and how to work with them and what we can use them for.

How much shielding you would need would depend on the amouint of nuclear material and the amount of radiation it would give of while in use. It may not be much. There are many light reactors that have been designed recently where you could walk into the room where the all the uraninium is and not be affected. Hell they even use nuclear tech to make our food safer.

Why it hasn't been comericalized yet is becasue it hasn;t been developed yet. But when you keep on increasing the power of rocket engines, sooner or later to get your plane to go faster you are going to need to utilize nuclear technology, becasue thats whats going to be needed when you hit the chemical performance wall.

[Admiral Piett]

Adminral Piet, Chyrnobal could only happen in the soviet union. It would not happen in this case becasue the type and amount of nuclear material and how it was being used would be different. And there is design consideration. the gas coming out would not be radioactive or have residue of it, just really superheated fuel, or whatever they use. Quite frankly I think its about time we looked at nuclear propulsion for even civilian flights. I think its the tech that could change allot of things for the better.

Yes the plane used electirc engine properllers.

The nuclear aircraft uses the air.Its engines(propellers,some sort of reaction engine etc),powered by the nuclear reactor, suck the air and accelerate it.In this way the aircraft has a range limited only by maintenance needs.
A space ship does not have the luxury of having a gas around,so it has to carry a fuel,hydrogen probably,and uses the reactor to accelerate it in a more direct manner.
One of the idea they are evaluating for the Mars project is to use an Americium based reactor to accelerate the hydrogen.This is an artificial element,a transuranic I believe but I am not sure,too damned expensive for every other application because they have to manifacture it with an accelerator,which is an a very energy consuming procedure.
But ANY element you choose for the nuclear reactor does not change the fact that it is still radioactive and IF AN AIRCRAFT CRASHES IT WILL CONTAMINATE HEAVILY THE AREA.
UNDERSTOOD?
Do you know that aircrafts crash,don't you?
Using them for civilian flights is not exactly a great idea.

[Admiral Piett]

there is nothing magical about it. Its something people have been working on and off for 5 decades, seeing if the technology supported it. They seem pretty enthused about it know, while as before it was more of a pipe dream. They could get it to work, but it wasn't as good as they hoped it would be. But we know allot more about reactors and how to work with them and what we can use them for.

How much shielding you would need would depend on the amouint of nuclear material and the amount of radiation it would give of while in use. It may not be much. There are many light reactors that have been designed recently where you could walk into the room where the all the uraninium is and not be affected. Hell they even use nuclear tech to make our food safer.

Why it hasn't been comericalized yet is becasue it hasn;t been developed yet. But when you keep on increasing the power of rocket engines, sooner or later to get your plane to go faster you are going to need to utilize nuclear technology, becasue thats whats going to be needed when you hit the chemical performance wall.

Light reactors which produce few radiations and use little radiactive material have been built.Unfortunately they are even low power.You need a lot of power to fly a 747,which means a powerful reactor which generates a lot of radiations.And when the aircraft crashes the reactor will be probably damaged,contaminating the area.

[Azeron]

where are your references for this? Heavily contaminated it? How do you know without studying the designs? Low power ligt reactors? I want to see the numbers.

Yes a conaminated site ca nactually be cleaned up. if it is neccessary, which it may not be. It may produce far less radiation than you get walking down the street. I forget the numbers, but isn't less than a coupler thousand rads of radiation not harmful to humans?

It also depends on the type of radiation given off. It could be just alpha radiation and not capable of penetrating the skin. There are far too many uncertainites to make far reaching assumptions.

Yes the americunimum is a rare earth element. I don;t think its unstable, probably in the 108 element range. Technitium I think (around 94) is the only truely artifical element below 110 range.

That was a recent proposal by some isreali scienctist if I recall lately. 1 of a few designs but it was supposed to be the fastest of all of the nuclear design.

[Admiral Piett]

[quote="Azeron"]where are your references for this? Heavily contaminated it? How do you know without studying the designs? Low power ligt reactors? I want to see the numbers.

It is all in proportion.For example if you want an attack submarine with a moderate speed you install a PWR.If you want a sub that goes at 40 knots you need to install a high density fuel reactor,which is more radioactive.
There is even a US submarine with a light reactor,such as those like you are describing,trash can size.Guess, it drives a minisub.
Tendentially a reactor which is more powerful than an other will be either larger or will have a higher density fuel (read more radioactive).

Yes a conaminated site ca nactually be cleaned up.
if it is neccessary, which it may not be. It may produce far less radiation than you get walking down the street. I forget the numbers, but isn't less than a coupler thousand rads of radiation not harmful to humans?

Unless you are speaking about some miracle technology,I tend to exclude it.It is highly doubtful that the vessel of your (probably high density) reactor
will be able to survive a fall from 10.000 meters.The core will be exposed causing a local contamination.Of course it can be cleaned.Even Chernobyl was to a limited extent.

It also depends on the type of radiation given off. It could be just alpha radiation and not capable of penetrating the skin. There are far too many uncertainites to make far reaching assumptions.

A nuclear reactor which gives only Alfa radiations? mmmm

[Admiral Piett]

For example,just to give you an idea, if you need to build a reactor with an output of 1000 Mw you can use 4 tons of Plutonium (in a sodium cooled reactor) or you can use instead 80 tons lighty enriched Uranium (in a PWR).
I hope you get the picture.
Where do these high power,light, non radioactive reactors come from I do not know.

[RadiO]

If this notional airlifter is a strategic asset in the C-5 mold, then maybe we could put a nuclear engine in it. Maybe.
But if it's a tactical aircraft like the Hercules and Osprey, then that throws up a new set of questions, because putting any kind of nuclear propulsion into a vehicle intended to fly in the face of the enemy must be risky. How damage tolerant is the reactor and its associated systems? If I put a 23mm explosive shell into the reactor, what happens? And even if it's all perfectly safe, and the reactor/nuclear engine/whatever the hell it is has tons of failsafes and merely shuts down harmlessly when damaged... what happens to me, the pilot, when the engine goes quiet at 500 feet? Do I get a backup turboprop engine, or do I have to bail out? What if it shuts down while I'm hovering half over the stern of a warship?

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

And once again I respectfully submit that a mile long airship (rigid or not) is still a "bullet magnet". Belay that. it is a missile magnet. And most of the cruise missiles nowadays (which can hit and destroy a 200 metre long warship from 400 miles away) should be able to take it out.

Please remember that AAA isn't the ONLY thing in the air now. Sure, WW2 zeppelins could take explosive shells. Big deal. Can they take a missile designed to shoot down fighter jets travelling at Mach 2? Or multiple missiles of that kind, for that matter?

And there are some guns which can reach sub-orbital blimps, the HARP (High Altitude Research Project) cannons which seem to have a ceiling of around 130'000 ft.

My point is, blimps are a good idea, just not anywhere near the field of battle! And the thing is, with today's technology, the field of battle is very damn big. So for shipping of commercial stuff yes. But NOT as a combat transport.

[Sea Skimmer]

And once again I respectfully submit that a mile long airship (rigid or not) is still a "bullet magnet". Belay that. it is a missile magnet. And most of the cruise missiles nowadays (which can hit and destroy a 200 metre long warship from 400 miles away) should be able to take it out.

Actualy, no missile has 400 mile range, more like 250 for a couple.

But that doesn’t matter, none of them have any air to air capability. The seekers would suffered from the same target size problumes even if they did.

What you need is a combination of an SA-5 or SA-4 missile airframe, and an EO guidance system. But nothing like that exists or is even projected. Such a system would also be easy to jam.
More then jam actualy, the jammers you could mount on a mile long blimp would easily put out enough power to fry the electronics of just aobut anything. It could be found through its command guidance signles, and a jammer then directed at the source.Stuff like this has happened, one EF-111 in the gulf was credited with a kill via manuver, however they claim to have directed there jammers at the attacking fighter, after which it promptly crashed.

Then we have the birds killed in Alaska by the Cobra Dane sets..

Please remember that AAA isn't the ONLY thing in the air now. Sure, WW2 zeppelins could take explosive shells. Big deal. Can they take a missile designed to shoot down fighter jets travelling at Mach 2? Or multiple missiles of that kind, for that matter?

A 25-90 pound expanding rod HE warhead wont even be noticed by somthing this sized. Several dozen would not faze it. And it ability to mount its own defences would make such massed attacks quite unlikely, plsu it should have escorting fighters.

And there are some guns which can reach sub-orbital blimps, the HARP (High Altitude Research Project) cannons which seem to have a ceiling of around 130'000 ft.

They also have the mobility of a light house on a sled. The mobility of even Italys 3 inch air defence tank was poor. Heavy AAA peices by nature are hard to conceal and hard to move.

My point is, blimps are a good idea, just not anywhere near the field of battle! And the thing is, with today's technology, the field of battle is very damn big. So for shipping of commercial stuff yes. But NOT as a combat transport.

I agree though, it would be stupid to risk something this sized on the battlefield. But the ability to unload 80,000 tons of equipment even 75 miles from the front line would be useful.

[Raxmei]

A number of people have mentioned nuclear aircraft. The US government actually made one several decades ago. Look up the Pluto project. It was an unmanned nuclear ramjet bomber. The key word here is unmanned. The reactor would have fried the pilot if they had one. It also would have been a radiation hazard to everything it flew over. Since they planned to fly it over just the Soviet Union, that wasn't a problem at the time.

Azeron: You obviously know next to nothing about nuclear physics. The heaviest stable element is element number 83, Bismuth. Anyone with more than the most basic of knowledge in this field would know that off the top of his head.

(cue claim of being a nuclear physicist, in addition to military historian and rocket scientist)

For reference, Americium is element number 95, and it is radioactive. It is only an alpha emitter, but that is still dangerous if ingested or inhaled.
Americium decays into Neptunium. I don't remember offhand what Neptunium becomes, but the name begins with the letter P. Anyone here know?

[RayCav of ASVS]

A number of people have mentioned nuclear aircraft. The US government actually made one several decades ago. Look up the Pluto project. It was an unmanned nuclear ramjet bomber. The key word here is unmanned. The reactor would have fried the pilot if they had one. It also would have been a radiation hazard to everything it flew over. Since they planned to fly it over just the Soviet Union, that wasn't a problem at the time.

Azeron: You obviously know next to nothing about nuclear physics. The heaviest stable element is element number 83, Bismuth. Anyone with more than the most basic of knowledge in this field would know that off the top of his head.

(cue claim of being a nuclear physicist, in addition to military historian and rocket scientist)

For reference, Americium is element number 95, and it is radioactive. It is only an alpha emitter, but that is still dangerous if ingested or inhaled.
Americium decays into Neptunium. I don't remember offhand what Neptunium becomes, but the name begins with the letter P. Anyone here know?

X-6 - B-36 with onboard nuclear reactor. Fully manned too.

[Azeron]

I think I qualified my statments with "I bleleive", "around", "I think". I haven;t studied pyhsics or chemistry in years, so it isn't my expertise. But I know a few things. Here and there. Am I an expert no. Are you?

Never claimed to be a rocket scienctist. Just discuss what I hear and what is explained to me, and pass on my understanding. I suspect thats what most peopel do on this board. Are you going to call them rocket sciencetist even thouigh they never made the claim?

Histroy and economics are my strong suits, but I try not to be limited to them. My qualifications in regards to history are extensive. I have over 5 years of collegeic study of Ancient civilization in particular western history, and even more particular Roman History. I know latin (though its has been getting weak since I rarely use it these days) and have translated a few manuscripts, such as the Anneid, a good deal of Cicerio, Julius Ceaser and more classical education than you can shack a stick at. Plus I have studied on my own, many different topiocs related to history. Its a hobby. Studing the past gives perspective on where we are going. I also know some ancient Greek as well, though that was for langauge exvolution study course I took.

Lets go over your education now.