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.

[GregM]

So let’s see here. To start with we have the Valkyrie: an aircraft that is the product of late 1950’s technology built and flown in the early 60’s. It is the size of a jumbo jet. It comfortably cruises at a speed of 2,000 mph at an altitude of 13 miles, would likely have a max speed of 2,300mph and a max ceiling of 17 mi. It has a range of 7,500 miles. It weighs 400,000 lbs AND has an additional payload capacity of 50,000 lbs.

No one would ever believe those numbers if there weren’t an actual vehicle attached to them. Not even today. For an aircraft of several generations ago it is astonishing.

All of this 45 years ago. Remember for a moment that World War 2 had only been over for 15 years at this time. 15 years. Yes, the Valkyrie prototypes were problematic, but by God – the fact that such a vehicle even existed and operated is nothing short of one of the greatest aerospace miracles in history. If given the time to mature and go into production, I have no doubt that it would be one of the most famous aircraft in history.

Now, jump to today….

The naysayers say that there is no way that even with 30 years of additional technical development, can the best and brightest of the aerospace world with a huge budget construct a small spaceplane that can leap into space from a vastly upgraded version of a Valkyrie. Nope, can’t be done.

Now, I do greatly respect the knowledge of posters here. With all due respect however, the naysayers on this subject are the same ones that would have said in the 1970’s that it would be impossible to construct an operational combat aircraft with the shape of an inverted bathtub that would be all but radar invisible.

The logic of “I can’t figure out how the world’s most high-tech ultra black programs might invent something revolutionary – therefore it simply can’t be done” is both a little silly and pretty arrogant. I’m sure that no one here can figure out how to make a submarine the size of an office building invisible to detection underwater either – but it is something that exists today nevertheless.

The “Valkyrie on steroids” aircraft has in fact been seen by numerous credible observers in multiple widely separated locations over the past decade. These are not “Area 51 the aliens are in the freezer” crowd either. These are credible observers. It cannot be dismissed by naysayers as mass hallucinations, or mass hysteria, or something of that nature. There is a very high probability that this aircraft does exist. The more relevant question would to me be “WHY would such an aircraft exist?”

There is solid historical precedent for this type of high performance mated aerospacecraft operation in the black intelligence community as well. In the early 1960’s, the SR-71 was launching high speed (Mach 5) unmanned recon drones into “hot zones” in the same manner as this new system is described to do. They stopped doing it when they ran out of the disposable drones and the replenishment cost was considered too much. Blackbird flew solo after that.

When they did shut down the Blackbird a decade ago, did anyone really believe that there would be no replacement?

The details in the AW&ST article are fairly specific and from multiple sources. It is not terribly ambiguous. Lots of specific facts and figures. If this article is not to be believed, is the author making this stuff up? Is he a liar? Let’s be blunt here: many of the details given are said to be from multiple individuals who worked directly in this program. Either the author spoke with such individuals and got this very specific and descriptive information that is true, or the story is a fabrication by the author, or author spoke with these multiple sources and they are all liars.

I would argue that even if this article is not 100% correct – I would bet it has some sort of a solid basis in fact. Maybe the spaceplane is not orbital, maybe it’s suborbital, or skip-glide like the Sanger Bomber. Maybe it’s unmanned instead of manned. However, to outright dismiss it is in my mind displaying cynicism and a lack of an open mind about an area where things thought to be impossible have been made possible before. Mr.Bell is example number one without exception. He is an angry, cynical man IMO.

They don’t call it Dreamland for nothing.