When Good Tech Almost Goes Bad

Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean you should.

Even though the concept behind the hydrogen bomb was “technically sweet”—Robert Oppenheimer’s term—he opposed going ahead with the super-bomb.  It didn’t work out in that case.  But sometimes wiser heads do prevail.  

“Project Pluto” was a development program for a nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered ramjet missile at the Livermore lab in the late-1950s, before ICBMs came on the scene.   Put simply, Pluto would have been a nightmare:  a locomotive-sized, supersonic, atomic-powered cruise missile with virtually unlimited range, flying at treetop height, tossing out H-bombs on it way.  Anyone underneath the thing when it flew over would be deafened, flattened, incinerated, and irradiated, in that order.  

The military loved Pluto, of course.  But even its designers at Livermore had their doubts. They called it the “flying crowbar” and worried that it might be too dangerous to flight-test.  One engineer told me that he was afraid it might get loose and make a low-level pass over Los Angeles.  Ultimately, Livermore concluded that Pluto was…well…just goofy.   Project Pluto was cancelled.    

But even bad tech can be, like a zombie, hard to kill.  Russian President Vladimir Putin announced three years ago that Russia would build a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed “invincible” missile with unlimited range.  NATO calls the missile Skyfall.  It appears to be a warmed-over version of Pluto.  

This article was provided by Santa Cruz local Gregg Herken, Curator Emeritus,  National Air & Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution . Gregg is the author of Brotherhood of the Bomb.