Nuclear Freakin' Planes

Wow, that's one hell of a headline, huh ?  Nuclear-powered planes !   No possible problems with that idea.  I wonder why no-one else in the entire newsmedia is reporting on this amazing story.

Imagine flying from London to Sydney without having to stop over to change planes or refuel.

This is the dream of scientists looking to shape the next generation of air travel as they test a system of huge, nuclear-propelled aircraft constantly circling the globe.

Passengers would be delivered to the behemoths via smaller planes, along with their luggage. People could even change flights in mid-air.

Engineers are also working on “flying petrol stations” that could enable non-stop flights from Britain to the other side of the world.

Instead of touching down in ­Singapore or Dubai on the way to Australia, huge “air tankers” would be strategically positioned along long-haul routes to allow planes to refuel in mid-air, cutting the time it takes to travel the world.

Sounds cool, right ?  Full story over at the Mirror is complete with a kick-ass gallery and awesome video.  But seemingly no other supporting documentation, and no external links.    Last line of the 'article' may give an idea as to why:

But the team admitted: “Neither air-worthiness nor acceptance of the idea by the general public is within sight.”

Which idea would that be, I wonder.  So, let's go look up the Recreate Project, and see what they have to say...

Project

SUMMARY

The research done in this project is about the introduction and airworthiness of cruiser-feeder concepts of operations for civil aircraft. Cruiser-feeder concepts of operations are investigated as a promising pioneering idea enabling energy efficient air transport of the future. The soundness of cruiser-feeder concepts of operations for civil aircraft has been under investigation in the RECREATE project for 36 months. A concept with fuel transfer from feeder to cruiser, and a concept with payload transfer between feeder aircraft and a nuclear propelled cruiser have been studied extensively. For the latter nuclear cruiser concept, it is concluded that neither airworthiness nor acceptance of the idea by the general public is within sight. However, for the concept with fuel transfer from feeder to cruiser (civil air-to-air refuelling operations), the results of our collaborative research indicate a fuel burn reduction potential on isolated aircraft level between 11% and 23 % for a typical 6000 nautical miles flight with a payload of 250 passengers. It is remarked that the lower bond of this reduction potential is usually considered as large in the aerospace industry.

So actually, the Mirror didn't give these plucky researchers enough credit.  They haven't actually ruled out...mid-flight refuelling of civilian airliners.  Just...the nuclear freakin' planes.  Oh and the whole ridiculous mid-air transfer of passengers thing.

And hey, looks like they gave some free advertising to Big Finish.  That's nice.