Just Another Nuclear Flying Saucer
February 2, 2001
And you thought those were aliens, silly!
The best place to be when the bombs start dropping is
elsewhere. The larger the bomb, the farther the elsewhere. This is
just a rule of thumb, but consider do consider its merits if you
happen to find yourself in a thermonuclear shouting match some time in
the near future.
America’s experimental Lenticular Reentry Vehicle (LRV)
program, a product of the Cold War in the 1950s and ’60s, was designed
from the go to provide a crew of four the best possible view of the
action should a hot war break out between the United States and the
Soviet Union-300 miles beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Packed with four
nuclear rockets with MIRV-capability and powered by a
Hypergolic/Nuclear drive, the disc-shaped LRV would have made for just
about the ultimate in high-altitude nuclear bombing entertainment if
it had ever come to be.
After WWII, Nazi engineers where a hot commodity. The
Russians grabbed everyone on the their side of the Berlin Wall. The
United States claimed most of those who’d had the sense to go west.
One of the little nuggets discovered amongst the catches of German
aircraft schematics was a design for an ultra-fast, flying wing, a
rocket plane that looked something like a compact disc cut in half.
The design produced minimal drag, excellent carrying capacity and
seemed a fine starting point for U.S. weapons designers looking to
dump a few billion into another secret weapons program designed to
provide the Stars & Stripes with a strategic advantage over Mother
Russia during the early stages of the Cold War. In fact, the very
existence of the LRV program remained classified until 1999, when a
congressional mandate forced the Department of Defense to open some of
its old files. The LRV, which was first conceived sometime the late
1950s or early 1960s, was one of the unusual discoveries.
How close the LRV came to christening isn’t at all
clear. The idea was apparently proposed in 1959 and classified in
1962. Not much else is known. There has been some speculation the last
couple years, however, that some of those bright lights Iowa farmers
kerp seeing hovering over their wheat fields may have rather more
domestic origins than the UFO hysterics would like to believe. Be that
as it may, the design schematics for the LRV released with the DOD
documents are pretty intriguing.
Built around a 40-foot diameter airframe, the LRV would
have likely been hefted into space by a solid rocket booster. Once
relieved of its burden, a chemical/nuclear drive could keep the disc
aloft and circling the globe for up to six weeks, during which it
would presumably dispose of its nuclear payload somewhere behind the
Iron Curtain. The four-man crew rode in a detachable capsule that
could be blown out from the main hull in an emergency. Sleeping
quarters and operations rooms were partitioned off in the vehicle
proper. The weapons payload-four MIRV (Multiple Independent Reentry
Vehicle) capable rockets would be housed out back two on each side of
a center-mounted launch tube.
Assuming things went well, and there was something left
to return to after its mission besides a glowing ball of radioactive
goo, the LRV would re-enter the atmosphere edge-first, its razor-thin
disc edge helping to dissipate reentry heat. Retractable skids would
have given it something to land on. All it needed was a long, dry flat
space, a kind of real estate which, in the wake of a nuclear
holocaust, would likely be readily available. A helium balloon would
then raise the craft and return it to its launch site in preparation
for its next little bit of fun.