Why a persistently airborne nuclear-powered fortress isn’t feasible.

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Similar to the Ausmerzer in Wolfenstein II: New Colossus or the Helicarrier in the Avengers universe.

In: Engineering

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You can do the math to see that your power requirements are just ludicrous.

Unless you’re planning on nuclear powered rockets then you’re really looking at something with fans electric like a helicarrier powered by a nuclear reactor.

The Sikorsky CH-53E can take off when weighing 33,300 kg with 3 3,270 kW engines for a kw/kg ratio of 0.2945 kW/kg, this is about the best you’ll get among heavy lift helicopters so we’ll assume you just sprinkle CH-53E rotors around to keep you airborne.

If you want to lift even a little aircraft carrier like a Wasp-class Amphibious Assault Ship used by the USMC then you need to lift 41,150,000 kg which will require 12.2 GW of power. The new Gerald R Ford Class Carriers have two reactors rated for 700 MW_thermal so you’d need at least 18 nuclear reactors to stay airborne, but you just made your ship even heavier so now you need more fans and more reactors, and more fans and more reactors

Turns out drones are really cheap, versatile, and easy to move around to where ever you need them. Even staging planes at a ground base will cost you less than trying to engineer a flying carrier, it’d cost trillions easily.

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