ASTR Tower Experiment Film
In January, 1946, the U.S. Air Force started working to build a long-range nuclear-powered bomber. The program evolved and became multi-pronged and truly massive. At one point they actually loaded a nuclear reactor onto an airplane, took off, and turned the reactor on in flight (it didn’t propel the plane though). We recently learned of a historic film from 1958 discussing this flying reactor and follow-up experiments where they lifted it up into the air on a huge tower in Oak Ridge. We found it, got it scanned, and have posted it online here:
The Air Force Programs (NEPA and ANP) built reactors hooked to jet engines and also built the first molten salt reactor: the Aircraft Reactor Experiment. Besides reactor and heat transfer technology, radiation shielding questions needed answers. Could pilots and crew in a nuclear-propelled aircraft be appropriately shielded from the radiation? What kind of radiation scattering would occur off the air under and around the reactor?
To answer these questions, the NB-36 program was created to operate a nuclear reactor onboard a flying aircraft. The reactor would be at power, but would not itself be propelling the aircraft. On September 5, 1955 the first nuclear reactor to operate in the air went critical in a modified Convair B-36 called the Nuclear Test Aircraft (NTA). The reactor put onboard was the Aircraft Shield Test Reactor (ASTR).
