Two-Stage-to-Orbit ‘Blackstar’ System Shelved at Groom Lake?
For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has investigated myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted that it’s “out there,” but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this innovative “Blackstar” system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we’ve learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into “black world” history, known to only a few insiders. U.S. intelligence agencies may have quietly mothballed a highly classified two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system designed in the 1980s for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery. It could be a victim of shrinking federal budgets strained by war costs, or it may not have met performance or operational goals.
This two-vehicle “Blackstar” carrier/orbiter system may have been declared operational during the 1990s.
Aerospace industry contractors suggest that a top secret Blackstar system could explain why Pentagon leaders readily offered the Air Force’s nascent unclassified spaceplane project, the briefly resurrected SR-71 program and the Army’s anti-satellite program for elimination from budgets in the late 1990s. At the time, an industry official said, “if we’re flying a spaceplane, it makes sense to kill these cover programs and stop wasting money on things we can already do.”
Is anyone really surprised? Your tax dollars at work.
Yes everything that made this country great will be eliminated so we can spend more money bailing out industry and utility giants that ruined their own companies. Oh, I forgot to mention paying for the removal of Saddam’s massive stockpiles of WMD.
Too bad the program was cancelled, instead of making it public. This is just the kind of thing that NASA, private industry, research companies would have been able to use space delivery of small payloads at what seems to be more economical prices. At about 1 Billion dollars per shuttle launch, the price is ridiculos, and expendable boosters with costs of 100’s of millions are not much better.
And just think of the prestige factor… the USA seems to be leading in almost nothing these days, having something like this, well publicised, would do wonders to raise morale.
Hmm, if this is true, then the name would have had to have been added after 1994, when Babylon 5 first mentioned the Blackstar. Is there also a project Lorien, Epsilon, Whitestar, and Valen?
The US government’s manned space program is for all intents a dead horse. The future of manned space flight looks to be here:
http://www.scaled.com/projects/tierone/
I wonder if this combination couldn’t be a sub-orbital, rocket boosted, hypersonic reconnaissance vehicle and its “mother ship” carrier. Then the radical streamlining Aviation Week describes, as opposed to the space shuttle like lifting body design favored by the X-43, would make more sense.