British Rail's Flying Saucer

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."

Fluxcapacitor

[eldavojohn]

Unfortunately, the Fluxcapacitor [espacenet.com] has already been patented (Fig. 1 & 2).

Prior Art!

[TripMaster Monkey]

This design [uncleodies...tibles.com] was made in 1965 [wikipedia.org].

Ambitious projects

[Mattygfunk]

While this may get shot down (NPI) as all a bit of movie inspired silliness, it's people who attempt these very ambitious projects and designs that change the world. Hey - commercial spaceflight is a reality today so why not?

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Laugh DAILY funny adult videos [laughdaily.com]

This solves nothing.

[harriet nyborg]

The fusion powered spacecraft is delayed due to a signal failure at Camden Town. Passengers are advided to board the next fusion power spacecraft and change at Saturn.

Re:British Rail

[pubjames]

Sorry that should have been:

"British Rail regret to announce... We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you."

The b*stards.

Little Green Men

[digitaldc]

"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."

After using the saucer, you are so full of radiation that you will begin to glow green.
This is helpful when trying to reproduce all aspects of 'alien' saucer lore, as well as to scare the crap out of your neighbours.

first contact

[user24]

so... when the aliens finally meet up with us, the first words between our race and theirs will be a notification of patent infringement and intent to sue said little green men for every neutrino core they've got... :-)

Announcement

[telchine]

Due to technical difficulties, this spaceship will terminate here at Uranus, a bus service will be along shortly.

I don't believe it!

[Rob T Firefly]

Someone beat Microsoft and Amazon to an insane patent!

Re:British Rail

[91degrees]

The BR time dilation effects may be useful for interstellar travel.

Re:British Rail

[ricepudd]

Do you think they'd encounter the wrong sort of snow in space?

Re:British Patent System

[Anonymous Coward]

It's British, therefore it doesn't work when it rains.

Since it rains a fair amount in the UK, they've never managed to get enough consecutive sunny days to actually try the saucer.

(This is a sly reference to the way many classic British sportscars and motorbikes would fail to operate when it was the slightest bit damp.)

Rails?!

[consumer]

Since I switched to Ruby on Rails, I can develop fusion powered spacecraft in half the time! With no code at all! And it all tests itself!