Trump has suggested steam catapults every year since 2017, saying digital systems are too ‘complicated’
After nearly a decade of loudly complaining about the fact that modern US aircraft carriers use electromagnetic systems to launch fighter jets instead of steam-powered catapults, Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to redesign a new aircraft carrier to replace the modern system with the old-fashioned catapults he prefers.
Trump signed a national security memorandum on Thursday directing the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, to make the change he has had his heart set on since at least 2017, when he first described his idea to Time magazine.
The memorandum gives the Pentagon leaders 60 days to come up with “a plan on the required measures to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of” the USS Doris Miller, a Ford-class aircraft carrier, which is already two years behind schedule.
The same reason why you have a big pillar of steam at nuclear power plants. You can only use a fraction of the steam and the rest just ends up in the atmosphere.
You know the steam you see at a power plant is not the steam you use to generate power right?
Otherwise why don’t aircraft carriers already fume steam like that?
Because the steam in a reactor is closed loop. Meaning there’s just what you need, not an excess in generation.
The steam you see from a power plant is a separate cooling loop.
Aircraft carriers likely just use the more plentiful, and cooler, sea water for cooling. Meaning they don’t have any excess steam to use for the catapult.
There is plenty of generated steam for other systems, but this is probably done via electric boilers, not as an excess by product of power generation.
Not an an expert by any means, but this is just using my logic and understanding from nuclear physics, from my physics degree.