Atomic ramjet for exploring Titan

On Mar 18, 7:32 am, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
"Frogwatch" wrote in message

...

In the late 50s and early 60s, the USA had "Project Pluto" a nuclear
reactor powered ramjet whereby a reactor directly heated incoming air
to provide thrust. It could be capable of flying for months but
emitted a lot of radiation, maybe even a lethal dose to anything
nearby.
So, say we want to explore Titan completely from the air, we drop a
Pluto style ramjet into the atmosphere of Titan where it flies around
for months sending back data. At the end of its life, we could simply
allow it to crash OR we could use onboard solid rockets to accelerate
it to escape velocity from Titan and allow it to either go in orbit
about Saturn or to drop into Saturns atmosphere.
Such a flying machine might be just what we need to explore Venus
too. The dense atmosphere would allow for fairly low speed flight
there.

I'm honestly trying to figure out if this is the most absurd idea I've heard
in awhile, or absolutely brilliant.

I suspect a bit of both.

--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

I suppose you could use the reactor to heat air to drive a Sterling
cycle engine to turn props but this is mechanically more complicated
than the ramjet. Neutrons are emitted regardless of whether if it is
a ramjet or prop driven. Pluto was tested on the ground in NV. Wings
are well known so how much testing do we need?