GIGANTIC Aviation Week story, Pentagon has been flying 2-stage orbital spaceplane throughout 1990s&# Options

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

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.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Jim Oberg on MSNBC.Com Space News summed up the Boron fuel issue as follows:

'Another skeptical expert referred to the boron-based "fuel breakthrough."

"Boron-based fuels were the white hope of the 1950s because they have about 140 percent the energy/weight ratio of kerosene," the expert advised MSNBC.com by e-mail. "The B-70 and F-108 were designed to use them, and production plants were built. But when they actually tested the stuff, it turned out to produce combustion products that were liquid and destroyed the engines. Also, borane compounds are so poisonous they have been considered as CW [chemical weapon] agents! The whole program collapsed, and B-70 went back to kerosene."'

Who was that "expert" quoted by Oberg? I'll give you a hint: his initials are J.B. (That was one of his quotes that I didn't use, because I myself don't know for sure whether he's correct on that point, having no knowledge myself on the subject one way or the other.)