Yesterday's Tomorrow #366 - Uranium-235 powered car by Dr R M Langer

[Tom_I]

Is it the method of propulsion of the car that is unusual?

[Otto Puzzell]

Yes it is

[Wendax]

An atomic car?

[Otto Puzzell]

A-ha! Now we're getting somewhere

[kwgibbs]

jet-powered ?

[Tom_I]

It's a concept for a Uranium-235 powered car by Dr R M Langer, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, published in Popular Mechanics, January 1941.

[Otto Puzzell]

jet-powered ?

No

[Otto Puzzell]

It's a concept for a Uranium-235 powered car by Dr R M Langer, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, published in Popular Mechanics, January 1941.

That's it! 5,000,000 miles without refueling. 

[Bill Murray]

Sadly, I did not have time to properly research the clue "atomic car" but I did get started and ran across this.



I thought the group might enjoy  what I think is a genuine period photo of what looks like a modified 1947 Nash
situated as one of the targets of the Atomic Bomb testings done in our Western Desert area in 1950/51.

What a waste of what looks to be a perfectly good automobile if the photo is in fact authentic.  I do know they sacrificed a
lot of cars, trucks and other objects to measure the effects of the bombs.

[Ray B.]

They sacrificed many people too, knowingly or not, including reportedly many members of the cast and crew of The Conqueror, shot in 1956 in vicinity of St. George, Utah, downwind from the test site.

[Otto Puzzell]

If only they had filmed it elsewhere, and then sent every copy of that truly awful film to be incinerated at ground zero.