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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Of course, you still have to make the steam, and that takes some kind of fuel or energy source. I'm not sure the practice of converting energy to steam and then steam to motive power is practical. Maybe for high-power applications?

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Of course, you still have to make the steam, and that takes some kind of fuel or energy source. I'm not sure the practice of converting energy to steam and then steam to motive power is practical. Maybe for high-power applications?

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Nuclear Power plants are steam driven.

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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

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At 800 degrees F, the steam pressure built up within the coils reaches 1500 lbs. With a 1200 lb pressure, the engine will deliver 150 horsepower, whirling the propeller at 1625 rpm. Tests have shown that 10 gallons of water is sufficient for a flight of 400 miles. By increasing the size and efficiency of the condenser, the experimenters told me, they believe they can make this amount of water last indefinitely.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The problem with the nuclear plane show do you get the water into the plane?

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At 800 degrees F, the steam pressure built up within the coils reaches 1500 lbs. With a 1200 lb pressure, the engine will deliver 150 horsepower, whirling the propeller at 1625 rpm. Tests have shown that 10 gallons of water is sufficient for a flight of 400 miles. By increasing the size and efficiency of the condenser, the experimenters told me, they believe they can make this amount of water last indefinitely.

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in short, you carry it with you. I suppose there are ways to skim it from the air also, but otherwise, your carrying a pretty heavy cargo of water,


This is also an issue with the car, plus, both have a lack of space for shielding. A steam locomotive has a perfect barrel setup for shielding and can carry plenty of water, and will have no problem refilling along the way.

Ideally a train could recondense all the water and not blow off any steam, I don't know enough about it though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_locomotive

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:

Hello,

True enough. But no one except for Doc Brown seems to be able to get radio-actives into a car. I'm not sure what he used to get the train to fly.

Actually, I recall the air force briefly toyed with the idea of a nuclear jet, and apparently had an engine ready to test.

Just don't crash it, eh? ;-)

I think the reason nuclear plants use steam is because their energy product is heat. And steam is the best way to turn heat into motive force for the generators.

--Anthony

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They have such trains in Switzerland, Mike; when my family came home from Afghanistan, we took a vacation, bought a Mercedes at the factory, and traveled Europe. In Switzerland we were on just such a train; in this case, you could sit in your car and watch the scenery go by and then get your car off and go on your way.

But that, in my opinion, isn't the answer. Moving people out of cars is. We have a bus system, but it can't handle the volume and it's not run properly, unpredictable, uncomfortable, etc. If it were reliable, more would use it.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
...I think also that high speed travel is just a bad idea. Note the major problem with plane crashes is the speed the craft is going when it hits the ground.

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