GIGANTIC Aviation Week story, Pentagon has been flying 2-stage orbital spaceplane throughout 1990s |
GIGANTIC Aviation Week story, Pentagon has been flying 2-stage orbital spaceplane throughout 1990s |
Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Mar 6 2006, 02:24 AM
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Guests |
It may even have been manned:
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/chan...ws/030606p1.xml My God, what a story -- if it's even partially true. And, judging from this article, they are absolutely certain they have proof (along with proof that the thing, although it works, has recently been mothballed as not cost-effective). It's important to keep in mind, though, that this thing is NOT a workable prototype of the originally planned 2-stage winged Space Shuttle. The second stage -- the spaceplane that actually achieved orbit -- was relatively small and probably very inefficient as a cargo carrier; its advantage lay in allowing the US to get a military reconaissance (or weapons) satellite into orbit surreptitiously, with no advance warning of the launch going to other countries. Even at that, as I say, AW reports that the thing has been recently canned as not worth its (doubtless huge) black-budget expense. |
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Guest_Myran_* |
Mar 6 2006, 11:36 AM
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#2
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Thats very insightful deglr6328, and without enough knowledge about engineering and the feasability of a spaceplane as the one described. The part about a sodium laser guidance for adaptive optics that look down is what caught my attention.
In fact I thought it sounded like complete hogwash since they would have a 'guide star' compensating for the very thin upper part of the atmosphere that way. But I wouldnt say that the rest of the details seems likely, theres one other and BruceMoomaw pointed it out (or was that a quote?) The launch of the upper stage would be tracked by the Soviet early warning system and cause a number of alarms from the infrared signature as well as tracking radar while in orbit, yes they were fully able to track objects in low orbit around the Earth especially those flying over their own territory. Yet there have been no diplomatic crizis over anything resembling this, and I have kept track of such even those caused by simple sounding rockets fired from ESRANGE. So only from these two viewpoints I have to say that we should not put that much trust in this story. |
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