Permanent flotilla considered wasteful

I'd mooted power needs in spacecraft and aircraft. For aircraft I was more interested in surface-area than in weight; but weight did turn up for periodic energy requirements. We're talking very long term flights so: no fuel, just energy-powered propellers.

There is a word for kilowatts per kilogram. Rather: for the reverse. This is specific-mass - "alpha" - we want less of it, and what energy we do get needs to be electric and ultimately kinetic. Batteries deliver some awesomely low alpha - well below one (1) is attainable - but as Hop informs us, batteries run out. Still, a good battery lasting about a week is fine for Forever Flotilla when it's not 11 AM. Assuming we don't want to lift very much because, again: no turbo-, just -fan.

Some nerds who have been huffing much meth have been talking 0.04 or 0.15 α but, good G-d. 3 kg/kW by contrast seems practical. With a hat/tip to Project Rho, in the 1960s they used to consider 18 a good day.

Nuclear power plants are about the only way to generate this much power to our fuel-less fans. Nukes give out a lot of power for the space and fuel they take up - because the extra heat they give off can be recaptured. Nuclear-powered submarines, living under the sea and needing a premium on space for the canned monkeys down there, do not recapture this heat. They are widely bemoaned as inefficient: 13000-15000 kW. This is from 900 tonnes of weight. That alpha is in the high 60s. YECCCCH! It's the same principle as for space (again: Hop's rant absolutely inspired this one): here's the SAIRS from 2004. UPDATE 1/28: unless we're living in a Pluto ramjet lol.

One might moot some cockamamie contraption like flying vertical towers to recapture that heat, but it would have to divert that heat to turbines of its own, so why bother. In Venus atmo one can assuredly get better use of potential energy where the reactor is floating and coptering, not flying. That's down in the clouds, rather BELOW them.

In the meantime the 11 AM Flotilla will be an ad-hoc affair, pending the production of low(er)-alpha self-contained monkey cans. They'll use it during port-season, to/from Earth. I am not saying it won't happen - it might well be a prereq for getting to Venus in the first place - but the US Navy will assuredly want dibs on this tech for its own submarines, before any of this stuff gets out into space.

UPDATE 8/17: charge it up midstream. Still not buying it for nonturbo.