On a modern 747 it takes 13 hours to go from San Francisco to Shanghai (or more if you have a head wind). What is there to see except endless amounts of ocean?
[Sales pitch]
Tired of growing risk of heart attack due to bad lower body blood circulation? Annoyed about the jetlag in the destination country? Cannot get sleep in the aircraft? Why risk your health in a long non-stop flight? Spend a couple of days in the beautiful tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean! Bask in the glory of the sunshine, experience interesting people and local delicacies! Order your tickets today!
[/Sales pitch]
{Man, I'm getting good at this. I almost don't feel dirty anymore. Anyone note the obvious deficiency of this approach, by the way?}
Part of this is finding better radiation shields and part of it is smaller reactor designs. Right now the worlds smallest closed loop reactor system that I know of (made by Toshiba) is 20 feet by 6 feet.
Isn't this similar to the nuclear battery by Los Alamos research groups? What is the weight of that system?
Regarding the nuclear powered bomber, there are a couple of things to note: the aircraft where the reactor was fitted is large even by today's standard. But, it took away a lot of payload of the aircraft, and required quite a bit of shielding around the crew compartment. According to my understanding, the crew was restricted pretty much in the cockpit of the aircraft. This means that in order to use the reactor in current airliners, one would need to add a lot more of the shielding since the passengers must be protected also = more weight.
I'm not that hopeful on finding new materials to block radiation. Asking for a dense but light weight material sounds like a physical impossibility. Even if that could be done, the next question is price. These aircrafts should be commercially viable, after all.
After browsing through some introductory articles of the blending wing, I'm starting to see why it is taking long. First is flight control, indeed the blended wing design functions more like a fighter aircraft, being unstabile and all. Judging by some of the reports, turbulence has proved to be pretty difficult in these cases, and sometimes the test models have experienced great accelerations (in non-intended directions) in these conditions. Though I'm curious to see a large aircraft in a deep stall.
Second thing is the pressurization of the compartments. Current airliners use cylindrical hull to equalize the pressure differences around the passenger cabin, but in blended wing the cabin is not cylindrical, which will stress the airframe differently in different places. Some researchers are placing hope for computer aided design to find the difficult places in the cabin, some are working with new materials. Though I'm a little sceptical about the new materials. Of course it is possible to find them, but at commercially viable price?
Mika