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British Rail's Flying Saucer

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the to-manchester-and-beyond dept.

Dynamoo writes "The Register is carrying a story about a patent for a fusion powered spacecraft filed by British Rail in the 1970s. While the concept may seem silly for a public railway, it seems that the British Rail Research Division employed a large number of aircraft engineers who presumably had some spare time between projects such as the Advanced Passenger Train."

5 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. British Rail by pubjames · · Score: 5, Interesting


    Is this the same British Rail that can't even keep a train running on time? What chance have they got with a flying saucer?

    "British Rail would like to announce that the 17.34 UFO to Mars has been delayed due to a slight wind and a few leaves blowing in the air..."

    1. Re:British Rail by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Leaning over to take corners at speed is cool unless it throws everyones coffee into the isle

      It didn't do that. The ride was very smooth (when the tilt mechanism worked). Too smooth actually. People got motion sickness from going round a corner without feeling like they were going round a corner.

      You used to be able to see one rotting in the sidings at Crewe railway station.

      It was still there last August.

      Some of the technology made it to other trains. Sadly, not the tilting mechanism .

    2. Re:British Rail by Bazzalisk · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Actualy ...

      The tilting system worked fine, and didn't throw people's coffee around - it was practicly every other experimental system on the train that failed. Virgin trains are now running a tilting train service between London and Birmingham ... which makes me seasick, but everybody else seems to be happy with it.

      --
      James P. Barrett
  2. Daedalus by Phanatic1a · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "The thermonuclear fusion will take place in a series of pulses, each pulse being triggered by laser energy, and/or energetic particles reflected from a previous pulse. The system will be arranged so that the fusion process will decay after each pulse so that the stability of the system is maintained."

    Pulsed inertial confinement fusion is just a fancy version of Orion, and is what the British Interplanetary Society used in their Daedalus spacecraft concept. Given the 1973 date, the same year as the start of Project Daedalus, I imagine the 'inventor' was a member of the Society.

  3. Re:Other patents... by PFI_Optix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's more interesting is a system I saw years ago that was supposed to recognize whether a cat was carrying something in its mouth (like a mouse) by looking at its profile. No more "presents" left for you to step on when you get out of bed in the morning.

    --
    120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.