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_BruceMoomaw_* |
Mar 10 2006, 05:24 AM
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#2
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Guests |
OK, Bruce. Sure. It's true. I've certainly never dared compare myself to Aviation Week -- which is exactly why I jumped to the conclusion that they must know what they were talking about when they released this story, until Bell raised those points about fuel-to-payload ratio and ICBM warning satellites, which I still find hard to counter. I've just seen the other two AW stories on this in their March 6 issue, which unfortunately don't seem to me to provide any more information that would point toward an overall verdict on the story's veracity -- although they've certainly got enough witnesses to suggest that SOMETHING is going on. Could it be that we've actually got an improved version of those Mach 5, relatively low-altitude drones that Greg M was talking about -- specifically, a high-speed drone that returns to base automatically for reuse rather than being disposable (which, according to Greg, is what caused them to cancel the earlier drones as not cost-effective)? |
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