I think the Aurora Spaceplane exists, or something very much like it.
It is the stuff of internet conspiracy theorists’ dreams. A top secret, hypersonic, cold war spy plane that was allegedly flown by the Americans in UK airspace without the government’s permission.
Publicly, the UK government played down newspaper stories about people who reported seeing UFO-like phenomena. But documents released under the Freedom of Information Act suggest the Ministry of Defence took the rumours much more seriously. Its investigations even threatened to strain the special relationship. “It does show that they were concerned that this thing did exist and the Americans were flying it around willy-nilly over the UK,” said David Clarke, a social scientist at Sheffield Hallam University, who obtained the documents. “It certainly suggests that the British government suspected that they were being kept in the dark.”
The part I don’t like is that it means we are deliberately keeping NASA stupid. If we could apply that technology to our civilian space effort, we’d be so much farther along.
The UK makes a good place for this type of stuff, what with the cloud cover
On clear summer nights I often saw those film based spy satalites being recovered
Shit, that made me smile
Anyone interested in the current state of military technology needs to read Hunt for Zero Point by Nick Cook. NSA, Pentagon, Lockheed…all of these entities compete against one another for govnt spending. Conspiracy theory ? I think not. Just follow the money trail. NASA has been kept out of the loop for a long time. Just look at NASA Ames Research which was just purchased by the Chinese.
I used to be in the air force, and without getting specific, friends of mine said they saw some pretty odd aircraft on the west coast…
Our defense dept hates NASA and won’t share with them.Aurora is real and at area 51.It is old news that our media won’t cover.It is a lot like the Presidents marital problems if the media isn’t allowed to talk about it it didn’t happen.
I used to be in the air force, and without getting specific, friends of mine said they saw some pretty odd aircraft on the west coast…
I’m a USAF vet myself and considering that the west coast is the home of many experimental military aircraft, specifically Lockheed’s development facility at Palmdale and the test range at Edwards AFB, odd aircraft are not to be unexpected. On Aurora, I have no position as to whether it is likely to exist or not.
Amongst aerospace aircraft designers, it is pretty much assumed that some type of aircraft like Aurora, either experimental or operational, is a reality. There was a rumored competition for the contract in the 90’s for such an aircraft. It was likely between Lockheed and Boeing out of Palmdale. Similar rumors were rampant before the F-117 was revealed to the world. Of course, an Aurora-like aircraft doesn’t need to be “fielded” like the F-117 and therefore it can be operated in complete secrecy.
Aviation Week & Space Technology had this to say about the Blackstar program that went from concept to flight test and then to the scrap heap without ever being seen, photographed, or documented:
http://tinyurl.com/fh3hk
This aircraft parallels NASA’s wish to develop a two stage to orbit re-useable spacecraft. I wouldn’t doubt that the brass at NASA are fully briefed.
I find it interesting that no one at NASA is crying for a new launch vehicle after the X-33 program was canceled. They seem to be in no great rush for a successor to the Shuttle Orbiter. Perhaps a runway based replacement is already in the preliminary design phase.
If Aurora uses a scramjet engine (one possibility), then there definitely would be duplication of effort which is made apparent by NASA’s recent scramjet research tests. Otherwise, why would NASA test an engine concept that is already in production with the Air Force?
Also, NASA was instrumental in convincing Russia to let us use one of their mothballed supersonic transports (Tu-144) for research into a new American SST. It is very likely that this was merely research leading up to the development of the Blackstar, linked above.
My guess is that NASA is fully aware of what the boys in blue are doing in the Mojave Desert. I am sure they are supplying all kinds of data and engineering expertise.
If this thing exists it’s probably small and designed to lift a single pilot and a small instrument payload or possible a small tactical nuke. It’s also probably very expensive to build an operate. It’s all military, and not very useful for NASA mission goals. NASA needs heavy lift capacity. We already know that using disposable chemical rockets makes little economic sense nor does using a space craft you have to rebuild for flight readiness between launches. We need a leap in technology before manned space exploration makes sense.
I also would like everyone to read Day of the Cheetah by Dale Brown. Written in the 80’s, many of the items in the book were not fiction and were called other project names. Dale Brown talked about Predator drones, modified F-15s, amongst other things. But probably the most important program discussed was the DREAMSTAR(Blackstar ???) project. What I think should be questioned about this plane is not its speed and altitude rankings, but rather what goes on in the cockpit. DREAMSTAR was a plane that could fly by mind control.
Great comment, Mark.
It hurts my heart that we are doing things like this to ourselves. At the same time our Government is allowing astronauts to fly in obsolete NASA vehicles the Air Force was test-landing a runway-to-orbit spaceplane. (They almost certainly got to the suborbital stage, and by the mission description was intended to go to low orbit.)
Yes, secrecy is paramount for national security when it comes to advanced dual-purpose technologies. However, in the case of space exploration, we can classify the infrastructure and allow cleared civilian agencies to use this knowledge to build better spacecraft.
RTaylor,
Are you telling me that NASA couldn’t benefit from what the Air Force knows about high-temperature composites, high-thrust engines, and what happens to a pair of aircraft when they separate at high mach speeds? Don’t be so myopic. If we can build a craft to carry one, we can build a craft to carry ten.
*snicker* They said “willy”.
What I find interesting is that I though the SR-71 was a top secret plane until it was retired. The article even say stuff about the SR71 was censored before the FOIA was issued. But a while ago on Digg someone linked a site that had all the SR-71 crashes listed on it. Which also had scans of local newpaper clipping reporting the crashes going back to the 70’s.
The big push now at NASA is extraterrestrial flight Smartalix. Apparently they plan this without out a LEO platform, or LEO space craft construction I’m not sure these orbiters could scale to lift the tonnage needed for a lunar mission. Fuel is critical, even with SCRAMs. That final push is going to take a lot of oxidizer and a rocket motor
Get out !!! Are you suggesting the Government has something secret they haven’t told us about?
You could assemble a “barge” in low orbit and boost it to higher orbit using fuel ferried up.
RTaylor wrote “It’s also probably very expensive to build and operate” in regards to a TSTO system. Well, sure, it would be expensive but it is still a fraction of the cost of building and operating the Shuttle Orbiter fleet.
As for payloads, the original XB-70 had a payload capacity of 20,000 pounds. That was with over 200,000 pounds of fuel for a 5,000 nautical mile range with triple sonic speed bursts. And that was with 1950/60’s technology.
Now imagine what a new launch vehicle built today that was meant strictly as a high altitude ferry vehicle. Without the requirement for 5000 mile range, the fuel capacity could be halved and the payload could be bumped to much larger numbers.
My WAG (wild-ass-guess) is that a 50-100 thousand pound second-stage scram jet orbiter could be achievable (for reference, the F-15 weighs 32,000 lbs empty and 68,000 at max takeoff weight). That would likely mean a 10-20 thousand pound payload could be delivered to low earth orbit. By comparison, the Shuttle can deliver between 24-30 thousand pounds of payload to LEO.
And a TSTO system could be turned around in days, not months, especially if they were to build a couple of dozen stage-two orbiters and, say, four or five stage-one vehicles.
SOMETHING exists. I’ve heard it for years, usually before 5 a.m. local time, and I actually saw it this morning — fairly clearly — for the first time. Nothing flies at 3-4 in the morning but this. It leaves from somewhere in Nevada (most people think it’s Groom Lake, a.k.a. Area 51). It flies just offshore of southern California, turns, then heads back. It flies directly over Lake Arrowhead, CA, where I live.
One of my cats woke me up, so I went to the restroom, crawled back into bed, then heard the noise. I ran downstairs in the dark and looked out my north-facing windows and saw it — what appeared to be three burners, glowing orange, and two flashing lights. It really hauls — moves 3-4X faster than any commercial air liner, and due to noise restrictions, the closest major airport, Ontario, restricts flights before 6 a.m., so the aircraft is definitely military. I hear it twice a week — used to be Tuesdays and Fridays, but I thought I heard it on Monday this week. Next time I’ll have my binoculars handy.
The characteristic contrails of Aurora that have been seen, i have seen with my own eyes, twice! Once over Caterham in the UK after an A-Level Exam on the 25th of May 2006 at 15:50 exactly and last Thursday near sunset over my house in Old Oxted. i took a pic with my phone as i recognised them from other sites most notably http://www.aemann.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/donuts/report3.html with the Vancouver pic enlargement looking very like what i saw.
I didn’t see the exact plane that created the contrails since it must have been moving too fast but i definately saw the characteristic ‘donuts’ contrail of Aurora!