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.

[ljk4-1]

Six blind men in a zoo: Aviation Week's mythical Blackstar

Aviation Week magazine reported last week that the US had secretly
developed a two-stage manned spaceplane. Dwayne Day examines the
details of the article and the quality of the evidence cited and
finds many flaws.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/576/1

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Six blind men in a zoo: Aviation Week's mythical Blackstar

Aviation Week magazine reported last week that the US had secretly
developed a two-stage manned spaceplane. Dwayne Day examines the
details of the article and the quality of the evidence cited and
finds many flaws.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/576/1

Interesting article. And D-Day is most assuredly an expert in this field.

[helvick]

Interesting article. And D-Day is most assuredly an expert in this field.

That's one impressive precision guided debunking.