Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Project Pluto

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Project Pluto

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Nominator(s): Hawkeye7 (talk)

Project Pluto (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Introducing one of Wikipedia's stranger articles, an artifact of the Golden Age of Mad Science, which ran from roughly 1945 to 1970. It was fun to write. The project aimed to use a nuclear engine in a supersonic cruise missile. It would operate at Mach 3, or around 3,700 kilometres per hour, be invulnerable to interception by contemporary air defenses, and carry up to sixteen with nuclear weapons with yields of up to 10 megatonnes of TNT. What could possible go wrong? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:21, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Gog the Mild

Marking a spot. This will probably be a bit episodic. Nudge me if I seem to have forgotten about it. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:11, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • "The need to maintain supersonic speed ... meant that the reactor had to survive high temperatures and intense radiation." I can see how "The need to maintain supersonic speed at low altitude and in all kinds of weather meant that the reactor had to survive high temperatures and intense radiation" but why should the low altitude and the kind of weather raise the reactor temperature and radiation levels? Similarly in the main article.
    Y Added an explanation. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:19, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nice.
  • The second half of "Development" is probably not in summary enough nor non-technical enough terms for FAC, but it scrapes by my personal ACR threshold.

Down to "Test facilities" and so far it is an excellent read with very little to pick at. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:54, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bleh! You wouldn't get away with that at FAC.
It will do. You don't have to use the converter "in line". You could insert "$2 billion" by hand and keep the same cite.

That's it from me. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:01, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Matarisvan

Hi, ran the IA Bot on the page, will post my comments soon. Matarisvan (talk) 16:37, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Matarisvan: - Are you still hoping to review this? It would be the last needed review for this one barring the source review. Hog Farm Talk 23:29, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

HF - support

I'll try to review this one first and then McCain. Hog Farm Talk 02:24, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Does the R Division stand for "Rocket Division", or does it have some less obvious significance?
    Yes. This was the usual practice at LLNL. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:00, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "It would carry sixteen nuclear warheads with nuclear weapon yields of up to 10 megatonnes of TNT (42 PJ) each" - I don't think this is quite right. The text of the source reads It could carry more nuclear weapons, and larger weapons if desired, than a Polaris submarine, which has a normal complement of sixteen missiles each with a warhead of under ten megatons. In the source, the count of sixteen missiles appears to be a reference to what was on the Polaris submarine. Our article at Submarine-launched ballistic missile does mention the early US nuclear missile subs carrying sixteen warheads. Elsewhere in the source, it mentions the rockets potentially carrying dozens of smaller nuclear warheads
    You're quite right. Re-worded. (You may also be concerned at how few warheads a submarine has. Fear not! A modern Trident has up to 24 missiles, each carrying up to eight warheads, although fewer are usually carried.) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:00, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Can it be clarified more what a MW-day is? The MW is megawatt, but I'm struggling to figure out what that would signify? Enough fuel to produce one megawatt of energy continually for a day?
    Yes. It is actually a unit of energy. A million joules per second each day. As the fuel is burned up in the reactor, power generation will fall off. We can offset this effect by ... never mind. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:00, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The uranium was in the form of oralloy: uranium enriched to 93.2 percent uranium-235)." - I'm not seeing where the accompanying open parenthesis is
    Deleted. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:00, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is it relevant to briefly explain what Tory III would have been?
    My understanding is that Tory III was an improved version, but was still in the design phase when the project was cancelled. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:00, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's it from me. Hog Farm Talk 03:55, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review
  • File:Tory-IIC at Jackass flats.jpg - source link no longer works
  • File:Pluto-SLAM.png - source link no longer works and there needs to be some way to verify that this artist's impression is actually accurate
    Added archive links. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:00, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Except the archive link is for an article from 2021, while this file was uploaded in 2012. It looks like that archived website just took the file from Wikipedia. Also - is there any way to have a source that verifies that the artist's impression is actually an accurate depiction of the missile? Is Greg Goebel who made the image someone who is known in this field? Hog Farm Talk 17:02, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Oops, wrong link; replaced with a different archive reference. I did not add this image to the article. Greg Goebel is a prolific author of books about US bombers and missiles. See [1]. The image looks correct; compare with those at Vought (I think that is where I got the sixteen warheads figure from.) But I have doubts about its copyright status. Replaced with a NASA image. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:07, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The other images seem fine. Hog Farm Talk 04:06, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support on the content review and pass on the image review. Hog Farm Talk 23:29, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]


Zawed – Support

Picking this one up to get it across the line instead of waiting for Matarisvan. The article looks in good shape, just some nitpicks:

That's it for me. Cheers,Zawed (talk) 09:31, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Zawed, thanks for chipping in. I am currently occupied with 1 GA rewrite and 2 FA rewrites, so I wasn't able to commence my review. I'll have to wait till this article is nominated for FA in some time. Matarisvan (talk) 10:27, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This all looks good to me, I have added my support. Zawed (talk) 04:54, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Parsecboy

Source review:

  • Footnotes and citations all appear to be formatted uniformly
  • Nickpicky, but "required. [42]" needs to have the space removed
  • I'm a bit concerned about Harkin and Centurion Publishing - I can't find much on them, and it seems like they haven't published a whole lot of books (and what they have published is almost entirely books by Harkin, who is cited in this article). Apparently, they went out of business in 2019, which doesn't inspire confidence. I also don't see anything in Worldcat by this Hugh Harkin, nor can I find anything he's published that wasn't with Centurion, which also doesn't make me confident in his reliability as a source.
    Hugh Harkins is an author of books on aeronautical and historical subjects. See [2]. He has published books with other publishers eg [3] Centurion has published books by other authors. eg [4] Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:01, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I scanned through all 91 books listed here and all but the book on the Tornado were published by Centurion, as far as I could tell (with the exception of Ladies of the Mist, but that's fiction). The Tornado book was published by Pentland Press according to Worldcat, another seemingly fly-by-night publisher that was in operation for less than 15 years. I had a trawl through Google Books and only found this one that cites one of Harkins' books. There are a handful of citations here, here, and here. I think this one is marginal at best - as far as I can tell, he's not a trained historian, which is not automatically disqualifying, but he's basically only been published by a single company that operated for a fairly short period of time. We may need to seek further input at WP:RSN. Parsecboy (talk) 20:28, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's all. Parsecboy (talk) 14:21, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]