# Talk:Project Pluto

Once powered up, the unshielded half-gigawatt nuclear reactor would emit highly lethal radiation in a large radius; such a vehicle could not possibly be human-piloted or reused. Indeed, some questioned whether a cruise missile derived from Project Pluto would need a warhead at all; the radiation from its engine, coupled with the shock wave that would be produced by flying at Mach 3 at treetop level, would have left a wide path of destruction wherever it went. Contrary to some reports, the exhaust of the engine would not itself be highly radioactive. Also, the nuclear engine could in principle operate for months, so a Pluto cruise missile could simply fly a long and winding pattern over enemy territory to cause incredible damage.

this is very confusing and needs to be cleared up - if the engine's exhaust did indeed not contain any radioactive particulates, then it needs to be explained that the radiation emitted was purely gamma radiation. This was not my understanding though; I thought that the engine had radioactive components which ablated into the exhaust gasses... -Lommer 01:17, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I doubt it would have been left to fly around for a long period, even in those days.
It says "in principle", not "in practice." At supersonic speeds you'd just need it to fly for a few days to cover a tremendous area. Bryan 06:31, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
"In principle" relates to the engine running.  I think the aircraft would have been shot down.  It doesn't seem a particularly useful statement.  It isn't a militarily credible plan or attack.  What did find an echo in an SF story was that if the thing is launched, since in principle the reactor will run for a long time, it could be left flying round a parking orbit somewhere if the situation no longer justified pressing home the attack, in case it later did. Midgley 15:17, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I hate to ask this, but that SF story didn't involve zombie hookers, wouldn't it? I believe that the short story Ed Lee's Grub Girl had something very similar to Project Pluto which is responsible for the zombies. I hadn't heard about Pluto until years after reading it, and the plan sounded outlandish then and after I read more on the Flying Crowbar. --YoungFreud 07:27, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

You would not stand next to it when it was running, but is it really such a strong emitter that as it flies past at supersonic speed it kills people with radiation?
Like neutron bombs, I question whether the radiation would severely affect anyone who was not damaged worse by the shock wave.
This is without considering the actual energies and radius involved, becuase I have neither figures nor the right mathematics for it, but it seems likely that being say 700 m from it would not be unduly hazardous.  In order to deliver 400 REM to someone standing within 700m it would need to deliver that dose to them within 2 seconds or less (sound is 700m/s isn't it?).   It may be worth doing the actual sums on that.Midgley 15:27, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

This is where my understanding of the issue disagrees with the article; I was under the impression that the exhaust from the missile was radioactive (due to problems with ablative shielding). If that were the case, than a form of nuclear fallout would effectively be left behind wherever the missile flew, and would indeed contaminate areas for some time to come. But if I'm mistaken, then I'd agree with you and I can't see how the missile could cause a lot of damage... -User:Lommer | talk 22:33, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
The speed of sound is 342m/s, but that's not really important.  The Gregg Herken article (and its pictures) give the impression that the reactor did not heat the air indirectly, but rather the "reactor" was a large beehive-like array of thousands of "pencil sized ceramic fuel elements" that the ram air was forced through.  The reactor itself was in the stream and completely exposed (within the duct), not just unshielded.  Half way down the page: http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html there is a picture of the reactor itself on its side-- a big cylindrical block composed of thousands of small nuclear fuel infused ceramic tubes that were the fuel elements themselves (at least that's my interpretation); it was, in a simple sense, just an air-cooled reactor (take your standard reactor, strip away all the shielding, casings, control rods, cooling systems, water jackets, etc., and cool the core with a blast of air instead).  So, normal nuclear reactor radiation doses: yes it would be there, and yes it would seem to me that those doses would be low as the missile would pass by very quickly.  However, the exhaust stream would contain radiactive contaminants (since the fuel elements are in direct contact with the exhaust stream and the material would ablate to some extent no matter how good the material was), so yes, I would think that the exhaust would leave fallout behind.  How significant would it be?  If flight really could last "months or even years" then apparently the reactor must not erode too quickly, but five minutes of engine test is not enough to determine such details I wouldn't think.  Interesting project regardless.  Nwilde (talk) 22:42, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

This is really nice that so much work was put into this article. It really gives the subject some depth on the Wiki.  I linked Supersonic Low Altitude Missile to this one, and delisted P.P. from the [[Category:Cruise missiles]], as it was just the engine, and not the missile itself.   
Maybe we should have a [[Category:Tactical aeronautical powerplants]], or something.  –– Clarknova 18:11, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"Since nuclear power gave it almost unlimited range, the missile could cruise in circles over the ocean until ordered "down to the deck" for its supersonic dash to targets in the Soviet Union." - Wikipedia article.
"Since nuclear power gave it almost unlimited range, the missile could cruise in circles over the ocean until ordered "down to the deck" for its supersonic dash to targets in the Soviet Union." - Gregg Herken article.
This entry just seems to be bits and pieces strung together from the Herken article. There are many more instances of the entry using directly copied lines from the article.
Omegashade 03:08, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Not surprising considering I copied the initial article verbatim from [1], and according to [2] "Information presented on these pages are considered public information and may be distributed or copied." Do you know if Herken is the original author, or did he copy this source too? Bryan 03:35, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

http://www.oobject.com/nuclear-powered-transportation/nuclear-reactor-for-ramjet-icbm/2071/
Sourced from [3] (archive of missing .mil site) --Apoc2400 (talk) 09:32, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

At the time of this posting, there are no Wikipedia references to document that a nuclear ramjet ever existed. Accordingly, this article needs an acknowledgment that at some time, Project Pluto went black again.
Given the lack of any sources, it is very easy to argue that no nuclear ramjet ever existed, considering the documented difficulty of developing Ramjets. On the other hand, is is obvious to anyone with a technical background, that once a working nuclear ramjet was developed, it would never be abandoned, only refined and improved. 
Either way, it should be important to document when the last verifiable reference became unavailable, or to document that, while widely discussed in the "skunk works" community, no authoritative reference is available.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chinux (talk • contribs) 05:28, 13 August 2010 (UTC) 
I am uncertain of the import of this comment.There certainly was a nuclear ramjet. I am probably the last living engineer who worked on thee Pluto Program. In 1957, as a 25 year old engineer I went to work for the Marquardt corporation in Van Nuys California, on the Pluto Program, which had as its goal the design and development of a nuclear ramjet for use as a cruise missile. I did the first thermodynamic optimization of the nuclear reactor, calculating the optimum L/D for maximum thrust, given certain fixed parameters. An actual engine was built and tested after I left the program. Morton L. Caplan  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.117.118.83 (talk) 16:46, 28 December 2019 (UTC) 

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Project Pluto/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Sturmvogel 66 (talk · contribs) 14:00, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll get to this shortly.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:00, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

All images properly licensed
Is Merkle notable? If so redlink
Why using metric units and British/Australian spellings?
Be consistent about date format
Lots of detail in the lede that's repeated in the main body. It should be a summary.
More later--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:22, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
Responses

I thought the images were beautiful. Took some finding too.
I'm glad that you took the time; they're really nice.
I considered whether Merkle was notable while writing the article, but could not find enough biographical information to construct an article.
Fair enough.
Metric units are used per MOS:METRIC: "In non-scientific articles with strong ties to the United States, the primary units are US customary (pounds, miles, feet, inches, etc.) ... In all other articles, the primary units chosen will be SI units". I regarded the article as scientific in nature. Many of the sources, although some were written in America and in the 1950s and '60s, consistently used metric; the others were in a mixture of Imperial and metric. Adjusted the conversion templates to use American spellings.
I was thinking of Imperial units for larger units and metric for the smaller ones as it sorta croggles me to see references to km of roadway, etc., in a US article.
That would be more historically accurate and true to the sources. Generally speaking, the engineering was in imperial and the science in metric, so the size of the fuel elements was in imperial but their contents in metric, but at the test site they used both; temperatures were sometimes in Celsius and sometimes in Fahrenheit, and pressures are sometimes in psi and sometimes in millibars, often in the same report. And then there was the occasional wtf unit, like megawatts per cubic foot. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:29, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Done a pass through and adjusted the two stray date formats.
The lead is a summary of the article, so it repeats information that is in the body. As is my general practice when expanding an article, the lead is substantially the article as it was before expansion.
Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:06, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

That doesn't serve you or the article well in this case. Not least because all the stuff about the facility in the lede is irrelevant for the lede, not to mention contains data that isn't in the main body and contradicts some of the figures there. Consolidate all that stuff in the main body where it's needed.
Since Merkle isn't notable, he doesn't need to be listed in the lede, either.
Maybe not, I've kept him in. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:29, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
The discussion about the technological problems is good, but exactly who built the fuel elements isn't important. And the specific info on the engines in the last para seems redundant to the last sentence of the first para.
Y Re-worked. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:29, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
What's missing is a summary of the origins section and the first two paras of the development section explaining the background and operational-use case for the engine as part of a weapons system. And a few more details on the engine testing regime wouldn't be amiss. "Roaring to life" is very literary, but doesn't suffice, especially given the amount of material devoted to the engine tests in the article.
Y Very grateful that you specified what you thought should be added. Usually people ask for the lead to be expanded without telling me what additional material it should contain. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:29, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
And there needs to be better coverage of the cancellation with explanations as to why.
Y Added. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:29, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
The rest of the article looks pretty good as I'm not seeing much, if at all, but I'll give it another read through once you've dealt with the lede.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 11:26, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Dealt with. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:29, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

I always have the hardest time with the lede, especially since it's hard to summarize the important specs of a ship without simply duplicating info in the main body. This one's a lot easier to do than most of mine even though it's got tons of scientific data because there's so much more info on the overall program and why they wanted it. I'll reread the article again for final comments before the weekend.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:15, 9 June 2022 (UTC)