Similar to the Ausmerzer in Wolfenstein II: New Colossus or the Helicarrier in the Avengers universe.
In: Engineering
Well, it’d be theoretically possible, it’d just be hard. Helicopters need a pretty high power to weight ratio – a Chinook, with a mass of 22.7 tonnes and ~7000 kW of maximum power, has a power to weight ratio of ~310 kW/tonne. To compare, a nuclear-powered Los Angeles-class submarine has 52000 kW of power, and weighs ~7000 tonnes, for a power to weight ratio of about 7.5 kW/tonne.
So, to make a nuclear-powered flying fortress, you’d need to make something nuclear-powered that has about forty times the power to mass ratio of a nuclear submarine, and unless you want the whole thing to be just a reactor with a tiny bit of actual aircraft stuck on, that means an at least ten times more power dense reactor as well. This is probably going to end up with the reactor being less safe, and you might need to skimp out on the shielding, too. Such power levels from a nuclear reactor aren’t totally unachievable though – the nuclear rocket engines tested during the NERVA program achieved specific powers in excess of 50000 kW/tonne, and even though you’d want to scale that down a bit for use in a long-endurance vehicle, it shows that this sort of thing is at least theoretically possible.
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