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Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 6 2006, 02:24 AM

It may even have been manned:
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/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.

Posted by: tasp Mar 6 2006, 02:56 AM

Sundstrand (maker of aircraft electrical power generators) put together a proposal for a new electrical generating system for the SR-71 in the very late 80s or early 90s.

It was assumed (by those of us at a 'low level') that the generators would not, in fact, be used on an SR-71.

I would suspect they were for the carrier craft.


Always wondered what they were up to . . . .





Wonder what the $ per pound for LEO is with this system and if it is competitive with . . .

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 6 2006, 02:58 AM

Interesting, but I don't think AW&ST's track record on this sort of thing is too good. For every success (they broke the story of the F-117, IIRC) there are two or three questionable bits of uncorroborated science fiction. I'm remembering a story they did in the early '90s on a saucer-shaped military aircraft that was powered by the Earth's magnetic field, or some similar bit of fringe science. And of course there's the "donuts on a rope" pulse-detonation engine sightings, "Darkstar November", etc.

Not for nothing is it called "Aviation Leak and Space Mythology."

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 6 2006, 03:44 AM

Whatever happened to the "donuts on a rope" story? I remember the photos from that story, and the magazine was reporting auditory observations of the supposed pulse-engine long before that.

Posted by: deglr6328 Mar 6 2006, 06:30 AM

Completely fascinating. Virtually all the details seem to be very plausible. Except for one glaring oddity. The section stating: "The spaceplane is capable of carrying an advanced imaging suite that features 1-meter-aperture adaptive optics with an integral sodium-ion-sensing laser. By compensating in real-time for atmospheric turbulence." makes no sense. Sodium lasers used for AO are used to create artificial guide stars in the earth's natrual sodium layer at ~90 km up. If you are orbiting and looking down, this is useless to you. >90% of the phase altering atmospheric turbulence occurs below this layer and shinging a bright yellow laser DOWN, to say nothing of its utterly unacceptable use in a clandestine situation, would do virtually nothing for you in terms of image sharpening. I have little doubt that this thing exists (how else could they've dumped the SR-71??!) but there are a few little things that make it seem like while they were getting the story at least a few people wanted to have a little fun with them.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 6 2006, 07:54 AM

Jeffrey Bell, that eternal party-pooper, caught not only that one but a large set of what look like additional downright fatal errors in the whole story, to wit:
______________________________________


This story is riddled with absurdities:

"A large 'mothership,' closely resembling the U.S. Air Force's historic
XB-70 supersonic bomber, carries the orbital component conformally under
its fuselage, accelerating to supersonic speeds at high altitude before
dropping the spaceplane. The orbiter's engines fire and boost the
vehicle into space."

Starting out from Mach 3 and ~100,000' will not give enough of a boost
that a small single-stage vehicle can reach orbit, or even a once-around
trajectory. Whoever wrote this article has been reading too much
t/space propaganda.

"The manned orbiter's primary military advantage would be surprise
overflight. There would be no forewarning of its presence, prior to the
first orbit, allowing ground targets to be imaged before they could be
hidden."

Soviet missile-warning satellites would pick up the IR plume from the
second stage, and since it would not be at a known space launch site
they would interpret it as a covert nuclear missile launch. At a minimum
you would get a major diplomatic crisis, at worst an accidental nuclear war!

"The spaceplane is capable of carrying an advanced imaging suite that
features 1-meter-aperture adaptive optics with an integral
sodium-ion-sensing laser."

This technology only works looking up, not down. The turbulent layer in
the atmosphere is close to the ground and far away from orbit. You
don't need it in space (besides the provocation of firing a laser at a
Soviet installation from orbit).

"The orbiter's belly appears to be contoured with channels, riblets or
'strakelets' that direct airflow to engine inlets and help dissipate
aerodynamic heating. These shallow channels may direct air to a complex
system of internal, advanced composite-material ducts, according to an
engineer who says he helped build one version of the orbiter in the
early 1990s."

Composite materials are held together with epoxy glue and are highly
flammable (see DC-X fires). You need Ti or steel for hypersonic intake
ducts because the air is red-hot.

"One version of the B-70 could have been used as a recoverable booster
system to launch things into low-Earth orbit. . . . The DynaSoar
program, the first effort by the [U.S.] to use a manned boost-glider to
fly in near-orbital space and return, was considered in this context in
November 1959. The B-70 was to carry the 10,000-lb. DynaSoar glider and
a 40,000-lb. liquid rocket booster to 70,000 ft. and release them while
traveling at Mach 3. With this lofty start, the booster could then push
the glider into its final 300-mi. orbit."

Again, the rocket equation tells you this won't work. You would need
something bigger than Titan II for the booster and that is far too heavy
for the B-70 to lift. North American was notorious in those days for
proposing unworkable ideas, e.g. the orbital X-15.

So to me, this article has as much credibility as last year's article on
spaceships powered by zero-point energy. It seems that AvWeek's staff
now lacks even basic technical knowledge.
__________________________________________

Which presumably means that I do too, since I didn't catch any of this at the time. Put not your trust in Aviation Week, apparently (although I still wonder if this may have been a distorted version of a real story).

Posted by: Myran Mar 6 2006, 11:36 AM

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.

Posted by: paxdan Mar 6 2006, 11:37 AM

The set up described reminds me of the Tagboard project utilising a modified A-12 (which was the precursor to the YF-12 and SR-71) known as the M-21.

Here is a picture of the http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4e/D-21.jpg. The program described in the AW&ST article sounds like the logical extension of the research avenue.

I would be supprised if something along the lines described in the article didn't exist, even if it is just an unmanned test vehicle, strapped to the belly of a supersonic bomber.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 6 2006, 11:44 AM

Jeffrey Bell is really worried about the threat from the Soviet Union, isn't he? I'm glad he never makes any, er, unsubstantiated statements!

On a more serious note, I'm sure that the DoD would have loved a black manned orbital capability, especially if it could be seen as an SR-71 follow-on (so pilots woulda had to be involved). And after Challenger, the DoD were no longer committed to the Shuttle they'd halfway designed, so yes, it kinda makes sense. However, not quite *enough* sense.

I'd be prepared to believe in a number of black projects, including air-launched not-quite-orbital unmanned payloads, covert ops insertion and rescue vehicles, an unmanned SR-71 replacement and so forth, but sadly I can't really buy DynaSoar Mk II.

Bob Shaw

Posted by: edstrick Mar 6 2006, 12:00 PM

ET Phone Area-51?

Actually, I've recently read another CG animated movie in the works is "Escape from Area-51"... in which a group of captive ET's break out of Area 51 in a "great escape". Sounds funnier than a lot of lame hollywood ideas to me!

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 6 2006, 01:25 PM

Here are grabs from the AW&ST website:

http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/030606p1.xml

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Ames Mar 6 2006, 02:16 PM

Where does the undercarriage go?

doesn't "look" right

Nick

Posted by: tty Mar 6 2006, 07:56 PM

Actually this is a rather typical Jeff Bell effort. Partly true, partly exaggerated and partly nonsensical

Actually it just about would. It would cut the deltavee needed for LEO from 9.5-10 kms-1 to something like 8.5 kms-1. With an Isp of 450 s (similar to the Shuttle main engine or the X-33 aerospike engine) this would require a fuel fraction in the 80-85% range which is perfectly practical for a small single stage ELV with a recoverable Corona-style capsule. Whether it is practical for a spaceplane is perhaps more dubious.





Fortunately the Soviet Union doesn't exist any longer, and even when it did I don't think they would have started a nuclear war every time a smallish missile or sounding rocket was launched anywhere in the World.





True



This is the nonsense part. Titanium and steel besides being heavy are useless at hypersonic speeds. The X-15 used them, and that was about the end of the line. There was repeated problems with heat damage and when the X-15 was modified to exceed Mach 6 an ablative coating had to be added (and even so there was serious damage on that Mach 6.72 record flight).
Apparently Bell is unaware that more than one type of composite material exists. Actually just about the only feasible material would be SiC-coated RCC composite.



Since the Dyna Soar was meant to be launched from the ground by a Titan III it seems to me a rather smaller booster would suffice. A 40,000 lb booster does sound a bit on the small side to reach orbit, but not absurdly so.

tty

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 6 2006, 10:53 PM

Whoa, horsey. Russia -- under Yeltsin -- damn near started one in Jan. 1995 after misinterpreting the launch of a Norwegian scientific sounding rocket, which was far smaller than this thing would be. (See the Nov. 1997 "Scientific American" for the grisly details.) And, as I understand it, there were some very close calls earlier, during the Soviet days -- and not just on the Soviet side.

You couldn't use the Spaceplane to sneak up on Russia, or any other nation that had missile-launch warning satellites -- but does even China have those? I don't think so. However, even if we decided to use the Spaceplane against nations that did lack that ability, the US would have had to inform Russia about the existence of the thing, while demanding that Russia keep the information to itself -- which is decidedly shaky practically.

Regarding some of your other points:

(1) "Actually it just about would. It would cut the deltavee needed for LEO from 9.5-10 kms-1 to something like 8.5 kms-1. With an Isp of 450 s (similar to the Shuttle main engine or the X-33 aerospike engine) this would require a fuel fraction in the 80-85% range which is perfectly practical for a small single stage ELV with a recoverable Corona-style capsule. Whether it is practical for a spaceplane is perhaps more dubious."

But what you're talking about is just the equivalent of a Pegasus-type launch for military purposes. Maybe worth doing (if you ignore the difficulties mentioned above about Russia detecting the launch and spilling the beans), but hardly revolutionary.

(2) "Since the Dyna Soar was meant to be launched from the ground by a Titan III it seems to me a rather smaller booster would suffice. A 40,000 lb booster does sound a bit on the small side to reach orbit, but not absurdly so."

But a Titan 2 was needed to put Gemini into orbit -- and Dyna-Soar weighed 1/3 more. Even given the initial boost from the XB-70 (which might substitute for the Titan 2's first stage, I suppose, since I haven't yet checked their comparative speeds and payload masses), you'd need a very large second stage -- surely weighing more than 20 tons.

So: I remain in the position, at this point, of pooh-poohing my own earlier Electrifying Announcement. Pretty much the story of my life.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 6 2006, 11:15 PM

Footnote: the Titan 2 second stage weighed 29,000 kg. I can't find any information on the velocity of the first stage at burnout on a Gemini launch -- but clearly, unless the B-70 was moving at MUCH higher velocity than the Titan first stage and/or the second stage used much more efficient propellant than that in the Titan 2 second stage, there is no conceivable way a 40,000-pound second stage would be adequate to put a Dyna-Soar in orbit.

Posted by: tasp Mar 7 2006, 02:59 AM

Heck, I have no professional reputation to protect, so let me have a go at this intersting wee beastie . . .

Back in the early days of the Atlas program, an entire assembly (less the double annular booster engines) was put in orbit. Seems like an empty Atlas is quite large and weighs 7 or 8000 pounds IIRC. That was nearly an SSTO vehicle back in 1960.

Lets spring forward and pare down the 'bloated Atlas carcass' (no offense to any of it's designers here, rhetorical exercise underway, after all) to something small enough to sling under and XB-70. Lets make it out of carbon fiber material like the recently demised SSTO vehicle. That might get my dry weight down to 2500 pounds or so. My mass fraction with a full fuel load is getting close.

Lets bump up the performance of the XB-70 'six pack' engine module (IIRC, back in the sixties it had a total thrust of <200,000 pounds) to 500,000 pounds since engine performance has improved (not as fast as Moore's law) in the 40+ years since. That will give us maybe Mach 4, 4 1/2, or 5 at 100,000 feet.

We can bump the ISP a tad for a scramjet on the deployed vehicle. Maybe it's an air breathing wave rider of some kind. Let's fuel it with slush hydrogen, with a small tank of lox for the final press to orbit.

Maybe we can make it now!

Think all that would have run 25-30 billion $.

How big is my black budget again?


{thanx, that was fun, I don't think Bruce is making an error backing off the story}

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 7 2006, 10:23 AM

The AW&ST article speaks of a Boron-based fuel, with a density similar to toothpaste.

That's almost trivial, though. The real problem is obviously handling the Dilithium Crystals!



Nick:

I agree - imagine an aborted launch, with a fully fuelled bird slung under the mothership. It'd be bad enough with SpaceShipOne, which at least has 'safe' fuel, but landing with a flying fuel tank under the belly of the beast and a fuel you probably don't dare dump within 200 miles of land...

...think how *strong* the landing gear would need to be, too...

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 7 2006, 04:36 PM

One *possible* vehicle which may form part of a somewhat conflated 'new' tale over at AW&ST is the putative X-24C design, not to mention the Lockheed FDL-5A and L-301 air-launched vehicles - all of which are either more-or-less credible depending on who you read - but are certainly not orbital!

Various images below are from: http://www.geocities.com/stratomodels/blackprojects.html or as credited - protype.jpg is slightly retouched, in the best tradition of these matters!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: tty Mar 7 2006, 08:43 PM

Well, I’ve been doing some more figuring and I must beg to disagree with Jeff Bell. It’s not impossible, not quite. If the carrier aircraft can reach Mach 3.3 and 100,000 feet (which after all is only slightly more than the SR-71 did routinely 40 years ago), and if it is possible to reach an Isp of 400 s or a little better using high density fuel (boranes?) then a SSTO vehicle with a mass ratio of 6 or 7 is possible. This last should be feasible for a vehicle in the 50 000 – 100 000 lb class (which could be carried by B-70 sized launch aircraft) using modern structural methods and materials. However the payload would be very limited. In a manned configuration probably virtually zero.

tty

Posted by: dvandorn Mar 7 2006, 09:48 PM

Just a little gedankenexperiment, here -- anyone care to ponder the ramifications, if the NSA had a manned SSTO vehicle, capable of detailed reconaissance from low orbit, operating at the same time that NASA had an injured bird in orbit?

I grant you, NASA failed to realize that their bird was injured... and failed to even request the kind of NSA imaging that Blackstar might have been able to provide. Much less been *aware* that such imaging, or such a potential rescue vehicle, might even be available.

But, if Blackstar *does* exist, *was* able to fly into orbit, and *was* capable of being manned -- that opens up a whole new can of worms when it comes to decisions made affecting Columbia's condition and the perceived lack of options the NASA managers thought they had in the event their bird *was* injured.

-the other Doug

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 7 2006, 09:57 PM

Interesting thought. Not to be pedantic; however, I'd probably replace "NSA" above with "NRO," the National Reconnaissance Office.

Posted by: dvandorn Mar 7 2006, 10:02 PM

Good point, Alex -- NRO probably would run such an asset, not NSA.

-the other Doug

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 7 2006, 10:08 PM

oDoug:

Congratulations! You've just invented a *new* internet conspiracy theory!

And it's *better* than most of the rest... ...we could maybe get Mel Gibson to play you, after you get madeover as a taxi-driver by some three letter agency or other!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: dvandorn Mar 7 2006, 10:32 PM

I'm not trying to imply conspiracies -- though it seems to me that AW&ST has already done so, in saying that such a thing as Blackstar may have existed for as long as 15 years and *no one* has said anything serious about it until now.

All I was trying to do was invite y'all to consider the consequences if Blackstar was a manned SSTO that actually worked, and that was in operational service during the final flight of Columbia. I suggest nothing except that y'all use your own imaginations as to what kind of recriminations could come out of something like that...

-the other Doug

Posted by: JTN Mar 7 2006, 10:44 PM

Not that new, I'm afraid: http://www.westwingtranscripts.com/search.php?flag=getSummary&id=134.

Posted by: dvandorn Mar 7 2006, 10:57 PM

I have to admit, when I saw the Blackstar story, that West Wing plot line came to mind. Amazing, how sideways-prescient some pieces of fiction end up being...

It's really a moot point, since everyone at Houston had convinced themselves that Columbia just couldn't have been seriously injured by a little foam -- and since, even if the bird was damaged beyond a safe return, they didn't think there were any options. I just wonder how much more careful they might have been if they thought there *were* options...

-the other Doug

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 8 2006, 01:26 AM

According to the article, not even the nation's "top military space commanders" knew about Blackstar -- the implication is that only the NSA and (maybe) the President and the Men In Black knew about it. Come to think of it, that's another reason to doubt the story; but if it was true, then certainly NASA wouldn't have known about it -- and the NSA or whoever would have been unlikely to catch any word from NASA that they might have need of such a capability unless NASA actually had taken the foam problem very seriously.

What strikes me about the whole Columbia story is what a cruel twist of fate it was that it happened to one of the few remaining Shuttle missions that wasn't supposed to visit the ISS. If it had, that hole in the wing would certainly have been seen, and -- with some judicious juggling and hastily increased funding of the Russian space agency -- we would probably have gotten everyone down safely (while still losing the Shuttle).

Posted by: GregM Mar 8 2006, 04:02 AM

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.

Posted by: tty Mar 8 2006, 07:24 AM

Also remember that there is a school of thought that contends that "black" programs are actually more efficient since the security restrictions mean that the number of people involved is minimized and the bureaucratic superstructure largely eliminated.

Having 30 years of experience in the aerospace business I must say it sounds plausible. Whew! Just imagine getting rid of most of those meetings, reviews and milestones....

tty

Posted by: paxdan Mar 8 2006, 09:58 AM

http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html What an aircraft!

Worth repeating:

GregM
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.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 8 2006, 11:04 AM

It should be remembered that there is still -- to put it mildly -- a difference between accelerating something to Mach 5 and accelerating it to orbital velocity. It may be that AW got hold of garbled accounts of some very high-speed but suborbital unmanned reconaissance drone that could be launched from such a plane.

As for the supposed higher efficiency of "black" programs: remember that "lack of bureaucratic oversight" also leaves such programs' managers free to flush a lot more of our money away on red herrings. We have just had a dramatic reminder of this in the Duke Cunningham case; he designed his little bribery scheme to revolve around black programs, so that nobody would be aware that he was using his clout to divert Pentagon money into questionable black programs in return for personal bribes from the contractors involved.

By the way, Jeff Bell has gotten back to me on another point: how likely is it that the Pentagon would fly its most top-secret plane over Salt Lake City at 2:35 in the afternoon? "F-117 and B-2 always flew at night when they were black programs...

"All you have to do is compare the alleged vehicle with real programs. Basically, the claim is that a black program succeeded in building a manned SSTO rocketship light enough to be lifted by a modified B-70 and
small enough to fit undeneath it. The whole history of X-15, NASP, DC-X, and X-33 shows that this is impossible. A launch at Mach 3 and 100,000' just won't reduce the ~90% fuel fraction needed for ground
launch enough to allow this. Every real air-launch proposal has used multi-stage expendables carried by heavy-lift jumbo jets -- and they still only can handle small lightsats. The laws of physics are the same at Groom Lake as everywhere else.

"I'm sure that the lowly production workers cited in the article were actually working on classified programs (the reported false billing to NASP sure explains where all that money went). But people at this level are routinely fed disinformation about the real goals of projects.

"Also, it happens that the government spends large amounts of money on projects that are technically impossible. The nuclear-turbojet airplane lasted to 1961, the nuclear-ramjet cruise missile to 1964, the
nuclear-thermal rocket to 1972. All these projects were kept alive by interested politicians long after the best scientific minds had declared them worthless. Lately we have had a whole series of impossible projects
funded by DARPA like the Falcon launcher and the nuclear isomer bomb. Just because the author of this article put 2 and 2 together to make 5 doesn't mean that no such program ever existed.

"I no longer trust anything in the aerospace press. Recall that an editor at JANE'S wrote a completely insane book about the Nazis developing flying saucers powered by zero-point energy -- and AvWeek published a totally credulous article about this same imaginary technology.

"The Space Cadets will go gaga over this report. For years they have been hoping that some black program like this will someday go white and solve all our spacelift problems.'

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 8 2006, 11:09 AM

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."'

Oh, and the recon drones used on the SR-71 (I know, I know, but let's just call it that, OK? It's easier than skipping around between names!) were, I thought, dumped after some nasty accidents at high speed. I have a book somewhere (I think by Jay Miller) showing them lying out to dry in the USAF boneyard just down the road from Scaled Composites, so there were certainly some left!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: paxdan Mar 8 2006, 11:11 AM

i've always liked the quote that "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Plus_2_%3D_5 for large values of 2".

Posted by: edstrick Mar 8 2006, 12:41 PM

I believe "AirCraftFilms", the companion of "SpaceCraftFilms" has a ?2? DVD boxed set on the XB-70 program. Another item in the "Want to blow some money on .... " category.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 8 2006, 01:27 PM

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.)

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 8 2006, 02:49 PM

I found this post from the FPSPACE list very interesting.

Make of it what you will. Anyone have a copy of that sketch available?

Message: 11
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 10:18:52 -0600 (CST)
From: <eagle267@verizon.net>
Subject: [FPSPACE] Re: space plane
To: fpspace@friends-partners.org
Message-ID:
<22077073.1141748332547.JavaMail.root@vms063.mailsrvcs.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Thanks Jim, for posting this. There is an incident back in December 1990 when
SOyuz TM-10 was followed for half of an orbit (I think orbit 7 or 8)by a winged
vehicle....Viktor Afanasyev was filmed discussing it and he drew a picture of
the object. Later, however, in 2003, he disavowed what he said back in 1991/92
about it. He basically said he was misquoted. The object, according to the
"new interpretation" was that it was some sort of wrench. I have seen the
careful drawing by Afanasyev, and it looks like no wrench I have ever seen. It
looks like a winged vehicle. ANd while in the original discussion that it was
about 60 meters in length (forgive me, I am thinking extemporaneously, as I am
at a remote location, with none of my usual materials about me), he said later
it was 6 meters in length. I have never met a wrench six meters in length.

There is corraboratory information by one of the fpspacers in Belguim I believe,
who has been recording all air-to-ground transmits from Russian spacecraft. I
discussed this with him back in 1996 or so (forget his name) and he confirmed
that there was a great deal of discussion and some excitement from the Russians
on the crew during their transit of the ATlantic (coming off of central America)
before their craft started its traverse over Europe...

This incident could likely be the craft revealed by Aviation Week.

I myself attempted to track down more about this, and even contacted Lockheed
Martin. I got a very strange response--I sent it to the Vice Pres. of the
development division (a woman at the time), and I got the response from one of
their attorneys...LOL telling me that they weren't aware of such a craft (I had
submitted to the Veep the story and drawing by Afansyev), but even if they were,
they wouldn't be able to make any comments whatsoever.

So that's my story for the assembled today.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 8 2006, 04:48 PM

Oberg using a quote from Bell that Moomaw didn't use (but knew of, of course). Perfect.

It's eerie but I just had a weird http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/Three_Blind_Mice/pages/35tbm.htm.

Posted by: tty Mar 8 2006, 11:18 PM

[quote name='BruceMoomaw' date='Mar 8 2006, 12:04 PM' post='44581']
It should be remembered that there is still -- to put it mildly -- a difference between accelerating something to Mach 5 and accelerating it to orbital velocity. It may be that AW got hold of garbled accounts of some very high-speed but suborbital unmanned reconaissance drone that could be launched from such a plane.

As for the supposed higher efficiency of "black" programs: remember that "lack of bureaucratic oversight" also leaves such programs' managers free to flush a lot more of our money away on red herrings. We have just had a dramatic reminder of this in the Duke Cunningham case; he designed his little bribery scheme to revolve around black programs, so that nobody would be aware that he was using his clout to divert Pentagon money into questionable black programs in return for personal bribes from the contractors involved.[/quote]

On the other hand we have U-2, SR-71 and F-117...

[quote]By the way, Jeff Bell has gotten back to me on another point: how likely is it that the Pentagon would fly its most top-secret plane over Salt Lake City at 2:35 in the afternoon? "F-117 and B-2 always flew at night when they were black programs....[/quote]

B-2 was never a black program, and there has never been any restrictions on daytime flights with it. It is true that the operational F-117 squadrons flew only at night (which was what they were meant for by the way), but if you check the record you will see that most of the early test flights were done in daylight. Anything else would have been insane, and this applies to our hypothetical "DarkStar" as well. When it comes to operating a recce system You have another constraint. Since you must overfly the target when weather and lighting is suitable you have rather limited discretion about when to fly.
As for overflying Salt Lake City, aircraft occasionally do have to divert for technical or operational reasons. Both U-2 and SR-71 had to land in places they were not meant to a few times while they "were in the black".

[quote]"All you have to do is compare the alleged vehicle with real programs. Basically, the claim is that a black program succeeded in building a manned SSTO rocketship light enough to be lifted by a modified B-70 and small enough to fit undeneath it. The whole history of X-15, NASP, DC-X, and X-33 shows that this is impossible. A launch at Mach 3 and 100,000' just won't reduce the ~90% fuel fraction needed for ground
launch enough to allow this. Every real air-launch proposal has used multi-stage expendables carried by heavy-lift jumbo jets -- and they still only can handle small lightsats. The laws of physics are the same at Groom Lake as everywhere else.[/quote]

I must say don't quite follow the reasoning here. The X-15 was certainly never meant as a SSTO. The DC-X was a moderately successful technology demonstrator for control and maintenance concepts and NASP was meant to take off from the ground, which is a much more demanding mission profile, for several reasons.
The fact is that would not be very hard to build an expendable SSTO which could takeoff from the ground. As a matter of fact the Titan II first stage (which had a fantastic mass ratio of more than 20) could have lifted a small payload to orbit even back in 1962. However the achievable payload fraction is so low that it is an uneconomical way to operate unless you have a reuseable launcher, which in turn increases the vehicle weight to a point where SSTO is probably impracticable using present-day technology.

However launching at Mach 3.5 at 100,000 feet changes things quite a bit. Not only does the necessary delta V decrease by nearly 1 kms-1, there is also a number of other effects that reduce the 1.5-2.0 kms-1 required for a ground launch in addition to the orbital velocity of 7.8 kms-1.

1) Time-to-orbit is shortened, reducing the loss due to "gravity drag".

2) You start out 30 km further from the Earth's center, reducing the amount of fuel required to raise the vehicle to orbital altitude.

3) Most aerodynamic drag is eliminated.

4) The engine can be optimised for running in vacuum or near vacuum, which appreciably improves the Isp. Incidentally this militates against AW/ST hypothesis about an aerospike engine, since the main motivation for such engines are their insensitivity to atmospheric pressure changes.

5) At 30 km and Mach 3 you are well on the backside of the Q curve permitting a lighter structure (this is a bit uncertain since it depends both on what Q is reached during re-entry, and on the flight profile of the carrier aircraft).

Note that the benefits of launching from a B-747 at 50,000 and Mach 0.85 are much smaller.

[quote]"I'm sure that the lowly production workers cited in the article were actually working on classified programs (the reported false billing to NASP sure explains where all that money went). But people at this level are routinely fed disinformation about the real goals of projects.[/quote]

I probably have rather more practical experience of secret programs than JB. They don't stay secret because the people who work on them can't figure what they are doing, but because they choose not to tell what they know. Incidentally my experience (admittedly from outside the US), is that when something does leak it almost always happens "at the top", not at contractor or military unit level.

[quote]"Also, it happens that the government spends large amounts of money on projects that are technically impossible. The nuclear-turbojet airplane lasted to 1961, the nuclear-ramjet cruise missile to 1964, the nuclear-thermal rocket to 1972. All these projects were kept alive by interested politicians long after the best scientific minds had declared them worthless. Lately we have had a whole series of impossible projects funded by DARPA like the Falcon launcher and the nuclear isomer bomb.[/quote]

And the Internet....

[quote]Just because the author of this article put 2 and 2 together to make 5 doesn't mean that no such program ever existed.

"I no longer trust anything in the aerospace press. Recall that an editor at JANE'S wrote a completely insane book about the Nazis developing flying saucers powered by zero-point energy -- and AvWeek published a totally credulous article about this same imaginary technology.[/quote]

I read AW/ST regularly and on the fairly frequent occasions when I have been in a position to check on them I have found them reasonably reliable. Politically they are very much by, of and for the US military and aerospace establishment, but making allowance for this and in purely factual matters they are on the whole more trustworthy than ordinary news media.

[quote]"The Space Cadets will go gaga over this report. For years they have been hoping that some black program like this will someday go white and solve all our spacelift problems.'
[/quote]

Not me, such a spaceplane would be uneconomical compared to an ordinary ELV. But not, I think, impossible.
Strange by the way that nobody has mentioned what seems to me the most obvious problem in keeping such a spaceplane secret. The plasma trails from re-entries should be highly visible, especially at night

tty

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 9 2006, 12:39 AM

Very weird indeed, Alex.

As I said, I didn't use that quote from Bell because -- and only because -- it is one on which I had no idea whether or not he was right, and therefore decided not to include among the evidence he provided that I did find convincing (in destroying my own original story). I hope you're not implying that I made up all this after the fact. If you are, I'll be happy to send you a copy of Bell's original E-mail to me (and, in fact, have just sent it). You'll note one glaring error he did make -- he originally misread that eyewitness account of the plane overflight at Salt Lake City as being 2:35 AM rather than PM (because, he told me later, he had jumped to the conclusion that the sighting had to have been made at night).

By all means, however, let's hear your own opinion of the AW story at this point.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 9 2006, 03:56 PM

It is a known fact that the CIA and USSR "supported" UFO reports
when the public spotted their secret aircraft and rocket launches.

See here:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_6_23/ai_57533273

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/1282426.html

http://www.cufos.org/IUR_article3.html

These recent posts from the FPSPACE list include a link to the sketch of
the "wrench" the cosmonaut saw. If it is legit, that ain't no wrench.

Message: 9
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 21:35:20 -0000
From: "satcom" <john> Subject: [FPSPACE] Re: FPSPACE Digest, Vol 25, Issue 6 To: <fpspace>
Message-ID: <000c01c6422f$08cc7130$6ed6fea9@DELLMASTER>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original


eagle267@verizon.net wrote.....

>Thanks Jim, for posting this. There is an incident back in December 1990
>when SOyuz TM-10 was followed for half of an orbit >(I think orbit 7 or
>8)by a winged vehicle....Viktor Afanasyev was filmed discussing it and he
>drew a picture of the object. Later, >however, in 2003, he disavowed what
>he said back in 1991/92 about it.

Is this the same incident ? *

The date quoted is 1979...and there's an image here

http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case392.htm

................................................................................
................................................................................
........................
*

In April of 1979, Cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev lifted off from Star City to
dock with the Soviet Solyut 6 space station. But while en route, something
strange happened. Cosmonaut Afanasyev saw an unidentified object turn toward
his craft and begin tailing it through space.

"It followed us during half of our orbit. We observed it on the light side,
and when we entered the shadow side, it disappeared completely. It was an
engineering structure, made from some type of metal, approximately 40 meters
long with inner hulls. The object was narrow here and wider here, and inside
there were openings. Some places had projections like small wings. The
object stayed very close to us. We photographed it, and our photos showed it
to be 23 to 28 meters away."

In addition to photographing the UFO, Afanasyev continually reported back to
Mission Control about the craft's size, its shape and position. When the
cosmonaut returned to earth he was debriefed and told never to reveal what
he knew, and had his cameras and film confiscated.

Those photos and his voice transmissions from space have never been
released.

It is only now, with the collapse of the Soviet Union that Afanasyev feels
that he can safely tell his story.

"It is still classified as a UFO because we have yet to identify the
object."

................................................................................
................................................................................
.......................


I think you are confusing it with the following ** , which apparently
happened in 1990.........

These incidents are widely quoted on various UFO sites as factual evidence
of little green men )

John

................................................................................
................................................................................
..................

**

http://ufocasebook.com/nasafacts.html

Gennadij Strekhalov, another cosmonaut - MIR Space Station, relates:

"On the last two flights I saw something. During the flight of 1990, I
called Gennadij Manakov, our commander to come to the porthole - but we did
not manage to put a film in the camera quickly enough. We looked on
Newfoundland and the atmosphere was absolutely clear - suddenly a kind of
sphere appeared. Beautiful, shiny and glittering - I saw it for 10 seconds -
it disappeared. What was it, what size it had? I don't know, there was
nothing I could compare with - it was a perfect sphere. I reported to the
Mission Control Center, but I did not say I have seen a UFO - I said I saw a
kind of unusual phenomenon. I had to be careful with the choice of my
words - I don't want someone to speculate too much or quote me wrong".

During docking with the Russian Mir space station astronaut Musa Manarov
filmed an anomalous object, he stated: "At some point during the filming I
caught sight of something I thought had separated from the ship. however, it
was not very close, I know this because the camera was focused on infinity.
Nothing could have broken away. There were no alarms were going off. Later
there were arguments over what possibly it could have been".


------------------------------

Message: 10
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 21:48:33 -0000
From: "satcom" <john> Subject: [FPSPACE] Re: FPSPACE Digest, Vol 25, Issue 6 To: <fpspace>
Message-ID: <000401c64230$e1bbc300$6ed6fea9@DELLMASTER>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original

Subject: [FPSPACE] Re: FPSPACE Digest, Vol 25, Issue 6


>Thanks Jim, for posting this. There is an incident back in December 1990
>when SOyuz TM-10 was followed for half of an orbit >(I think orbit 7 or
>8)by a winged vehicle....Viktor Afanasyev [ snip ]

Forgot to add.....

According to records , Viktor Afanasyev didn't fly his first mission unitl
1990.... So confusion seems to reign amongst the UFOlogy crew [ nothing new
there then ! ]

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 9 2006, 04:55 PM

Not at all. Frankly, I'm not questioning your veracity or Bell's, just your "expertise." As for Oberg, he might be a semi-expert in this matter. As for his veracity...Well, I'll refrain from commenting.

The upshot is that if I have to choose the better group of aerospace experts between Oberg/Bell/Moomaw and AW&ST, the choice for me "ain't hard." Hint: my choice has the word "Aviation" in its title.

As for the Three Blind Mice allusion, that was just needling on my part. Actually, given my estimation of Oberg's "semi-expert[ise]," one of the mice might have just worn an eye patch


I think all three articles are speculative, as AW&ST plainly states. Frankly, it looks to me that they're just chumming the waters to see if any walk-ins have more information on the matter. Relying just on eyewitness accounts smacks of UFO sightings.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 9 2006, 09:17 PM

Okay, but a magazine which (according to you) is capable of "chumming the waters" with a story which they themselves suspect may well be fake doesn't exactly strike me as a reliable "aerospace expert". (It will be interesting to see what their letter column shows in response to this story.) As for myself, I've never tried to present myself as an "expert" in any field of aerospace, except (maybe) some aspects of planetary exploration. If I did, I would have been a hell of a lot more reluctant to turn so quickly and savagely against the "GIGANTIC" story that I myself presented with such fanfare at the start of this thread.

But you still haven't answered my question: what do YOU think of the supposed technical information in the AW article, and of Bell's criticism of it? I'm not asking to be sarcastic; I am genuinely interested in what you think of this whole affair.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 9 2006, 09:32 PM

I can't really believe you're questioning the expertise and reliability of AW&ST, even if you disbelieve their Blackstar articles. Here's an interesting experiment: lay down, side by side, a typical article from AW&ST, you, Jeff Bell, and Jim Oberg. I don't know about anyone else, but it wouldn't take me a long time to pick out the real "aerospace expert[s]."


OK, Bruce. Sure.


As I said, it was an interesting article, and I read it for what it was (and what AW&ST claimed it to be). That's all.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 10 2006, 05:24 AM

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)?

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 10 2006, 09:46 AM

From Wikipedia:

"One notable variant of the basic A-12 design was the M-21. This was a A-12 platform modified by replacing the single seat aircraft's Q bay, which carried its main camera to a second cockpit for a launch control officer. The M-21 was used to carry and launch the D-21 drone, an unmanned, faster and higher flying reconnaissance device. This variant was known as the M/D-21 when mated to the drone for operations. The D-21 drone was completely autonomous; having been launched it would overfly the target, travel to a rendezvous point and eject its data package. The package would be recovered in midair by a C-130 Hercules and the drone would self destruct.

The program to develop this system was canceled in 1966 after a drone collided with the mother ship at launch, destroying the M-21 and killing the Launch Control Officer. Three successful test flights had been conducted under a different flight regime; the fourth test was in level flight, considered an operational likelihood. The shock wave of the M-21 retarded the flight of the drone, which crashed into the tailplane. The crew survived the mid-air collision but the LCO drowned when he landed in the ocean and his flight suit filled with water.

The only surviving M-21 is on display, along with a D-21B Drone, at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. The D-21 was adapted to be carried on wings of the B-52 bomber."

And:

"The Q-12 design was finalized in October 1963. An air-launched vehicle, it was powered by a single Marquardt RJ43-MA-11 ramjet, and used key technology from the A-12 project, including titanium construction. Its double-delta wing was similar to the A-12's outer wing design.

In late 1963, the project was named Tagboard and the Q-12 was re-designated D-21 while the A-12 became M-21 (D- for "daughter" and M- for "mother") to prevent confusion between Tagboard and the Blackbird family, which spawned from the A-12 design.

Testing

The D-21 mounted on the back of the M-21 - Photo: LockheedThe M-21/D-21 combination began captive flight-testing in December 1964, continuing through 1965. Aerodynamic covers that were in place over the intake and exhaust were removed after the first few tests, as it was unable to drop them at Mach 3 without damaging the M-21 and/or D-21. Increased drag caused by the removal was overcome by using the D-21's ramjet as a third engine.

The first launch of the D-21 from the back of the M-21 occurred successfully on March 5, 1966, followed by two others on April 27 and June 16 of that year. The fourth and final launch occurred a month later on July 30. The D-21 impacted with the M-21's tail immediately after separation, leading to the crash of both aircraft and the death of one of the two M-21 crewmembers. Due to this accident, the M-21/D-21 combination program was terminated.

The D-21B mounted under a B-52H - Photo: LockheedAn alternate method of launch had already been proposed before the ill-fated flight, as the M-21/D-21 launch procedure was known to be risky. A modified D-21 would be launched from an under-wing pylon on a B-52H. The Tagboard drone had to use a large solid-propellant rocket booster to accelerate to the target speed before igniting the ramjet, as the B-52 had a much slower speed.

The modified drone was designated D-21B - although there was no -21A version - and all D-21s on order in mid-1966 were completed as D-21Bs. Two B-52Hs were modified to carry two drones each and could communicate with the D-21Bs, which had improved remote control links that remained active up to 10 minutes into the mission.

Initial testing began in September 1967 and went on until July 1969, and was not very successful for some time. The first flight ended with the drone falling off the wing of the B-52 before even reaching the launching area. Not until the last two flights, having recovered the camera hatch after the drone had covered more than 5370 km (2900 nm), did the B-52H/D-21B system get declared ready for operational missions.

Operational Use
Four operational missions took place under the name SENIOR BOWL, from November 9, 1969 to March 20, 1971, all over the People's Republic of China to spy on the Lop Nor nuclear test site. Only two drones completed the flight, and system malfunctions prevented the recovery of the reconnaissance camera. Due to the poor level of success and the introduction of a new generation of photoreconnaissance satellites, the Tagboard project was cancelled in July 1971.

In the end, 38 D-21/D-21B drones were built. Twenty-one were expended in tests and missions, and the remaining 17 vehicles were placed in permanent storage and redesignated as GTD-21B. Since the mid-1990s, they have been released to museums for display."

________________________________________________________________________


There certainly *were* other airframes at the boneyard as I posted previously, though I now suspect it was the D-21B we were seeing there.

So: High speed UAVs *did* exist 35 years ago, and it is entirely reasonable to assume that a black project using modernised vehicles could exist today. A fast-dash/loitering mothership followed by a Mach 3 pass over a target (or onto a target, perhaps more likely) is perfectly credible. A recon variant (these days) might well be autonomous enough to autoland at a designated AFB, preferably well away from prying eyes (Diego Garcia sounds like just the place for both the mothership and it's baby to head for after a run over President Bush's Favourite Places). Note from above the problems with an air-launch from the upper surface of the SR-71, as compared to the more-or-less routine business of dropping things from the belly of aircraft.

Which leads us to *why*?

The argument goes that satellites can do a better job, and more cheaply. For routine recon this is very true. The key to this matter, though, is in the nature of satellites themselves. Even stealthy satellites are now routinely tracked from the ground by amateurs. Software to predict passages over any particular spot is readily available. So, the Bad Guys™ can simply wait until no birds are visible and then move about with impunity. So, what would *I* do if I was trying to remove 'em from the board? I'd lull them into a false sense of security with regular satellite passes, then catch the blighters via a recon UAV, then call in the very fast things that go bang. Of course, it's bad news for anyone else attending that particular wedding party, but Bush & Co are prepared to take the risk.

So, there you have it: a perfectly credible scenario for a pointy thing to be seen hanging below a fast aircraft!


Bob Shaw

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 10 2006, 12:16 PM

Blackstar: False Messiah From Groom Lake

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Blackstar_A_False_Messiah_From_Groom_Lake.html

Honolulu HI (SPX) Mar 10, 2006 - Many Space Cadets have gone gaga over the
report in Aviation Week that the US military has developed a secret reusable
spaceplane. It seemingly confirms a long-standing fantasy in the space
community. For years a lot of us have been hoping that some "black" program
like this will someday go public and solve all our spacelift problems.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 11 2006, 11:31 AM

Bell, having now read the two other Aviation Week stories on this subject, has developed a new theory of what the eyewitnesses were really seeing:

"The second article on the orbiter has a detailed description of the
vehicle as seen by an F-15 pilot at Holloman AFB (NM). He describes the
four main engine exhausts as having a gridlike or 'radiator' appearance.

"Now this is not typical of aerospikes or any rocket engine. But the air
intakes on the F-117 do have grids over them to keep radars from seeing
the compressor blades (which give a strong radar return and a
distinctive modulation).

"So, if one was designing a high-subsonic or transsonic stealth recon
plane, one might well use grids to keep radars or IR systems from
looking up the tailpipe and seeing the turbine blades. Probably there
would still be a narrow spike of high detectability along the thrust
axis, but with a little care this axis will never point directly at a
ground radar or hostile aircraft.

"This article also describes two circular ports flanking the engines
and white cylindrical objects seen on the ramp alongside the
'spacecraft'. AvWeek interprets these as solid-fuel booster rockets that
fit into the stern ports.

"But a stealthy recon plane might want to shoot missiles backwards at a
pursuing fighter. There is a naval version of the Sparrow/AIM-120 family
that steers by vectored thrust at low airspeeds. With a little work it
could steer at negative airspeeds. Back in the late 50s the Navy worked
on backward firing missiles for P6M and possibly A3D.

"So if there is any truth to this story at all, I think it refers to a
super-stealthy but otherwise conventional peacetime strategic recon
aircraft that sneaks over key sites between passes by imaging
satellites. This operational concept makes far more sense than the
blatantly obvious orbital or boost-glide scenario advocated by AvWeek.

"Holloman would be a logical emergency landing site for this aircraft
because it hosts the F-117 wing and has a lot of secure hangars:
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=13&Z=13&X=248&Y=2271&W=2&qs=%7cholloman+AFB%7cnm%7c

"The third article about the 'Mothership' is less convincing. The author
claims that many reports of B-70ish aircraft have been sent to AvWeek,
but the only one he describes in detail is ludicrous. An 'experienced
birdwatcher' in Pennsylvania claims that a Mothership flew by her house
at only 2500' AGL, lit off its afterburners, and climbed away with
tremendous noise. Sure seems like a top-secret operation, doesn't it?"

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 11 2006, 11:37 AM

Is it a bad sign when Jeffrey Bell starts agreeing with me?

I may have to go and lie down.

Bob Shaw

Posted by: gpurcell Mar 12 2006, 02:23 AM

Like our president, some things are true even though Jeff Bell says them....

Posted by: tty Mar 12 2006, 04:45 PM

Here it is Jeff Bell who is off speculating in the wild blue yonder for a change.

It is true that grids are used to prevent radar seeing the compressor front in stealthy aircraft. It is also true that they are not used in the engine exhaust for the good reason that they would become red-hot and make a wonderful target for an IR seeker. There are a number of other techniques for shielding the turbine face from radar.

There is no vectored-thrust version of the Sparrow or AMRAAM. They would in any case be completely (Sparrow) or almost completely (AMRAAM) useless for a stealth design aircraft. Sparrow is a semi-active radar homer and requires a radar to illuminate the target. Not good for a stealth aircraft.
AMRAAM is an active radar homer and so theoretically could be used provided you know the range and direction to the target. So I suppose it could be usable if the stealthy aircraft had an IRST system combined with a laser rangefinder.

The AIM-9X Sidewinder II has a vectored-thrust control system, so I imagine this is the missile JB is thinking of. Moreover it is an IR seeker with excellent off-boresight capability and so would be the natural choice for a self-defence missile.

However it will take more than a little work to build a missile that can be launched backwards. There have been a number of efforts last by Vympel with their R-73M, but nobody has succeded yet. Building a control system that can cope with the airstream changing from high speed in one direction to high speed other direction with an interval of essentially zero speed (and zero rudder effectiveness) within a few seconds while keeping the missile stable enough not to lose lock on the target and maintaining altitude when there is no aerodynamic lift will take some doing. The fact that the missile will be within the slipstream of the aircraft and flying backwards through it's own rocket exhaust doesn't exactly simplify matters either.

If you want another alternative explanation for those "white tubes", I would suggest chaff/flare dispensers. Much simpler, and workable.

tty

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 12 2006, 09:17 PM

I was thinking of that myself, you took the words out of my mouth!

As for the 'grids' - well, they're in common use on ex-Soviet missiles as aerodynamic surfaces which pop out after launch. Most memorably, though, are the self-same items on the Soyuz manned launcher - the grey squares on the spacecraft shroud are actually pop out stabilisers.

So both white tubes and grids have a straightforward explanation, particularly if it was a half-glimpsed hardly-believed view which the (pretty reliable sounding) witness had.

It all adds up to something other than a modernised X-20, though! I don't think that AW&ST have covered themselves in glory on this one (although their taste in cover pictures is, as we all know, impeccable).

Bob Shaw

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 13 2006, 05:13 PM

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

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 13 2006, 05:25 PM

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

Posted by: helvick Mar 13 2006, 06:04 PM

That's one impressive precision guided debunking.

Posted by: gpurcell Mar 13 2006, 07:01 PM

Ouch, that's GOTTA hurt.

Posted by: tty Mar 13 2006, 07:05 PM

Just one small point. That nuclear-powered soviet bomber mentioned at the beginning of Day's article. If you look at the pictures that were published at the time it seems very likely that the story was based on sightings of the Myasishchev 201M "Bounder", a transsonic heavy bomber that never got past the prototype stage. So the aircraft actually existed, but it wasn't nuclear powered.

Another case of "six men in a zoo", it seems.

tty

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 13 2006, 07:29 PM

This Web page has excerpts from the 1958 AW&ST article on the
Soviet nuclear bomber plus a link to a PDF document from 1963
evaluating the state of nuclear powered aircraft up to that time.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/space/c03anp.htm

Posted by: Myran Mar 13 2006, 09:53 PM

Two US built nuclear jet engines at Idaho National Labs found at the http://www.nukeworker.com/pictures/displayimage_51_0.html

These engines were built and tested since it was thought that the Soviet union already were ground testing such engines and possibly had one experimental aircraft. I mentioned this suject to friend of mine who are somewhat of one aviation buf and he said there have been something on Discovery channel about the Soviet nuclear aiplane, but I havnt seen it myself and cant say it was based on that Aviation Week article or other sources.

Posted by: Steve G Mar 17 2006, 02:56 AM

If you really want a good cry, read about the CF-105 Avro Arrow.

Posted by: GregM Mar 17 2006, 03:45 AM

I live 100km from the site of the former factory. A family cottage in northern Ontario is near one of the test pilot's home town. I know the story all too well.

I get sick to my stomach every time I think about it. I hope the country continues to NEVER forgive Diefenbacher for it - forever. Small minded prarie hick so far out of his depth he couldn't even grasp its signifigance. If he were only alive today to see what irrepariable damage he did to his own nation's economic and technical base.

Posted by: gndonald Mar 17 2006, 04:14 PM

Or possibly something even older, I recently learned that there were unsuccessful attempts to launch small satellites from a USN F4D in the lead-up to the top-secret Operation:ARGUS (August 1958), a series of nuclear tests designed to see if radiation from a nuclear device could be trapped in the Earths magnetic field.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 17 2006, 08:40 PM

Try a Google search on 'NOTSNIK' for the story - it was also covered in the BIS Spaceflight magazine some years ago. One out of the six launches *may* have worked!

See also:

http://www.nawcwpns.navy.mil/clmf/happyhelmet.html

Bob Shaw

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 17 2006, 09:38 PM

I believe this page has the BIS article online:

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/vault/NOTSNik/index.html

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/models/vault/NOTS/index.html

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 18 2006, 03:51 AM

Having finally read all of Dwayne Day's story, I note that he agrees not only with Jeffrey Bell's anti-Spaceplane arguments involving fuel-payload ratio and Russian detection of the exhaust plume, but also with Bell's arguments (which I wasn't qualified to judge) involving the nonexistence of aerospike jet engines and the high probability that the plane, had it flown in the daytime, would have been seen by planespotters. (Apparently that hobby is much more popular than I thought.) In fact, the only one of Bell's arguments that isn't mentioned and agreed with by Day is the one involving difficulties with boron-based fuel. I think this particular Av. Week story is not merely dead; it's really most sincerely dead (to quote the Munchkins' coroner).

And yes, Alex, I DID steal that joke (from "Science").

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 18 2006, 01:36 PM

Bruce:

Are you suggesting that it is an ex-story, that it is no more, has cast off this mortal coil and is generally pining for the fjords?

If you think plane-spotters are bad, try spaceflight enthusiasts!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: gpurcell Mar 18 2006, 01:58 PM

It is an ex-story!

Posted by: dvandorn Mar 18 2006, 03:19 PM

In re the Avro Arrow:

Remember, though, that the cancellation of the Arrow was a veritable windfall of talent that was infused into the American manned spaceflight program. The Arrow was canceled at just the right time for NASA's Space Task Group (later to become the Manned Spacecraft Center) to absorb the engineers that Avro let go. So, NASA's first steps into space were supported by a large number of talented Canadian engineers!

To all you Canadians on the forum -- thanks!

-the other Doug

Posted by: Steve G Mar 18 2006, 09:03 PM

\

Rub it in why don't you!

In the 80's, I used to attend a lot of RCAF reunions with my dad's group (airmen who had been shot down behind enemy lines in WWII and evaded capture through the underground) and met Angus McClain. He was former premier of PEI and more ominously, on the cabinet that scuttled the Arrow.

Though he said scrapping the existing Arrows was a rape, the fact was the aircraft was something like $12 per copy (in 1958 dollars) but the real issue was did it have a mission to fly? It was designed for high altitude intercept of supersonic bombers, but the Soviet ICBM came around, and there was no SS Soviet bomber to destroy.

The aircraft wasn't designed for low altitude combat cover or even dogfighting. (The canopy would have had to be completely redesigned for dogfighting since it was primarily forward looking.) The aircraft's only practical role in the face of the new reality would have been a medium range nuclear bomber, which Canada didn't need and wouldn't deploy.

It was the best aircraft in the world, even without the Iroquis engines that were just about ready, but had it been more on the scale of the Phantom II it may have stuck around. Still, scrapping the originals (except the one the Americans are hiding at Groom Lake (or was it in a barn in Saskatchewan?) according to the Dan Akroyd movie.) was, and still is, a national disgrace.

There is a full scale model at CFB Trenton, I believe, that they used in the movie and the nose of one at the aviation museum in Ottawa. But the fact that such an amazing flying machine was designed and built by a country of then, 17 million, was a fantastic feat, making he Arrow's demise that much more of a tragedy.

It's something that still haunts Canadians nearly a half century later.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 19 2006, 01:16 AM

If it hadn't been nailed to Aviation Week's reputation, it would be pushin' up the daisies.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 20 2006, 05:13 PM

AW&ST is also publishing a letter in the from D-DAY in the Correspondence section of the March 20, 2006, issue:

Posted by: ljk4-1 Apr 12 2006, 06:23 PM

http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/news/jdw/jdw060406_1_n.shtml

The full article is in the April 6, 2006 issue of Jane's Defence Weekly.

US black programmes: funding the void

By Bill Sweetman, IDR Technology & Aerospace Editor, Minneapolis

Black programmes are a subset of what the US calls special access programmes
(SAPs). A programme judged so sensitive that its existence is classified is an
'unacknowledged SAP'. Within this group are waived SAPs which are not briefed to
Congress. In this case, only eight individuals - the chair and ranking minority
member of each of the four defence committees - are notified of the decision.
These waived SAPs are the blackest of black programmes.

Some analysts believe that much of the black budget funds the operations of
intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, National
Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office and many new small units that
have sprung up in the aftermath of 9/11. Some of the identifiable items within
the classified world are strongly linked to particular intelligence activities.
The long-standing anomaly in US Air Force (USAF) missile-procurement accounts
funds intelligence-gathering spacecraft; it shrank considerably from FY06 to
FY07, reflecting the restructuring of the troubled Future Imagery Architecture
project for a new generation of radar and electro-optical spy satellites.

Where did the work lead?

Military space systems have been funded in the black world since the 1960s and
still are likely to account for a large proportion of black-world funds, but
whether they include a massive two-stage-to-orbit re-usable space
reconnaissance-strike system remains to be seen. Such a system might be
technically feasible, but even in small numbers it would be hard to conceal and
it would be unlikely that it would be permitted to operate over metropolitan or
suburban areas at low altitudes in daylight, as reports suggested.

The hypothesis, however, that a high-speed system of some kind was developed in
the 1980s is still supported by evidence, although much of it is circumstantial.
Unusual sonic booms over southern California in the early 1990s, and over other
places since, remain unexplained. A leading sonic boom expert who has reviewed
the California boom tracks believes that they were produced by vehicles
following a Shuttle-type landing profile.

Both the booms and the best eyewitness account of what may have been a secret
aircraft over the North Sea in 1989 are consistent with reasonable security
measures. The booms were recorded in detail by a seismograph network that the
USAF had no way of knowing was being used for that purpose and the sighting was
far out over open water, where the risk of a chance encounter with a trained
observer was minimal.

No direct evidence of such a project has emerged since the early 1990s, which
means one of three things; it was cancelled soon after it was reported; or it
has continued to operate on a spacecraft-like schedule, making very few sorties
in response to high-priority national requirements.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Apr 21 2006, 01:20 PM

Four more Aviation Week letters on the BlackStar story:

(1) James R. French (Las Cruces, NM), March 27: "Fascinating as it may sound, the BlackStar article does not meet the test of credibility.

"Based upon some quick analysis by my colleague Chuck Deiterich, a vehicle launching due east (to take advantage of the Earth's rotation) at Mach 3.3 would still require a delta velocity of about 21,700 ft/sec. to reach orbit. This doesn't account for drag losses, which even at that altitude probably would be 200 ft./sec.

"The best performance I have seen for a boron fuel, even with highly toxic liquid fluorine as an oxidizer, is a specific impulse of 409-412 sec. using a 95% burn efficiency. This will require a start-of-burn/end-of-burn mass ratio of around 5:2 -- not difficult for a disposable stage, but challenging for a manned vehicle with crew and payload, which must bear the weight of an entry thermal protection system, landing gear, etc. Using more probable oxidizers, the ratio quickly becomes impractical.

"The description of the vehicle goes on at length about apparent inlets on the belly. This is entirely at odds with the discussion of the linear aerospike rocket engine. The only air-breather that might be useful in this flight regime is the scramjet, which, while it does use an external expansion nozzle, does not use a linear aerospike of the type depicted. (Incidentally, the illustrations show a lack of comprehension about how a linear aerospike works.) Also, it seems unlikely that a scramjet would work with a slurry fuel as described, since the solid particles will be slow to mix and burn while rapidity is crucial to a scramjet.

"Finally, the B-70 launch of a '40,000-lb. stage' carrying a '10,000-lb. Dynasoar' surfaces again. Using the delta-V values quoted above, this combination is incapable of reaching orbit. Even if we use the specific impulse of the Space Shuttle Main Engine and assign an improbable 0.9 propellant mass fraction to the stage, it falls about 3000 ft./sec. short.

"One wonders how these ideas persist, without anyone ever really checking the numbers. I could go on at great length about other improbabilities, but this is enough. I really hope I'm wrong and that some super-duper vehicle does reside out there in the black world. I don't think I'll hold my breath, however."

(2) Mike Tinirello (Palmdale, CA), March 27: "The 'XOV' vehicle described in your article looks very close to a very fast aircraft that I observed in the summer of 1999 at Edwards AFB, California.

"I was taking out the trash and was drawn to look overhead (due to a sonic boom from an F-16). Two aircraft were flying due east in relatively close formation down the National Aerospace Corridor. One of the aircraft looked like a smaller version of the space shuttle, but was still larger than the F-16 chase plane. At one point, the space shuttle-type aircraft rapidly accelerated and disappeared off the horizon, leaving the much slower F-16 in its wake.

"Then the mystery craft silently returned, leaving a wake of smoke rings as it slowed down. You could see two nacelles in back, flickering as the puffs of smoke exited the vehicle. I did not observe a 'mother ship SR-3' nearby. Nor did I observe the space shuttle-type craft land at Edwards. I hve always believed this craft may have been the Aurora spyplane or some other secret craft. Perhaps it was the XOV. I also believe it was moving much faster than Mach 3."

(3) A. Leroy Clarke (Santa Fe, NM), April 10: "As a former wind tunnel engineer, the possibility of an 'XB-70 like spaceplane carrier' was of interest.

"The artist's sketch of the mated version certainly would illustrate a challenge for the landing gear group. The spaceplane likely would have to be much smaller or flatter than was pictured to have any hope of being strut-mounted to a large mothership needing to take off from a runway with conventional landing gear.

"The spaceplane could have been partially submerged into the fuselage in place of the bomb bay, similar to the X-planes in B-29s. B-70 bays were large enough to enclose the 1950s generation of nuclear stores, which were big and heavy. Better yet, the spaceplane could have been piggybacked on the aft fuselage, ahead of the vertical tails. Moving the XB-70's vertical tails outboard, as shown, would ease a launch from topside. This idea was studied in the late 1950s. I conducted wind tunnel tests with the B-70 for a spaceplane launch at altitude."

(4) Allan R. Swegle (Seattle), April 10: "Regarding the experimental orbital vehicle, I was a structures technology engineer on studies in the 1970s and 1980s about developing a reusable orbital vehicle system with vehicles of varying payloads. Our team studied vehicles and orbiters that were launched from subsonic and supersonic carriers at various altitudes.

"A common feature of proposals for orbiters has been systems that require lightweight thermal protection systems (TPS) over aluminum (such as the Shuttle Orbiters), or composite structural materials systems that must be protected to 300 deg F or less.

"To save weight, these systems must have limited wing area and hence develop high temperatures during reentry due to high wing loadings. Some concepts have developed higher boost-phase temperatures than for reentry. The materials for thermal protection on leading edges and surfaces needs expensive and time-consuming maintenance. Added weight, slow turnaround, weather sensitivity, increased risk and cost are products of these TPS concepts."

Posted by: tty Apr 21 2006, 05:07 PM

Piggybacking on a B-70 would not be a good idea aerodynamically. B-70 was a waverider, i e it used its own supersonic shockwave to improve L/D at supersonic speeds. This requires a flat upper side and a bulbous belly to work. The best solution would probably be to carry the vehicle to be launched semi-recessed on the underside of the carrier aircraft.

The SR-71 carried the the D-21 piggyvback, but then the SR-71 was not a waverider.

tty

Posted by: ljk4-1 May 23 2006, 07:09 PM

Black projects don't seem to be having any budget problems...


PENTAGON'S BLACK BUDGET SOARS TO COLD WAR HEIGHTS

The Department of Defense budget request for 2007 includes about $30.1 billion in classified or "black" spending, according to a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

"In real (inflation-adjusted) terms the $30.1 billion FY 2007 request includes more classified acquisition funding than any other defense budget since FY 1988, near the end of the Cold War, when DoD received $19.7 billion ($29.4 billion in FY 2007 dollars) for these programs," wrote author Steven Kosiak.

See "Classified Funding in the FY 2007 Budget Request" (pdf) from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Archive/U.20060517.FY07BlackBudget/U.20060517.FY07BlackBudget.pdf

The study was reported in "Classified military spending reaches highest level since Cold War" by Drew Brown, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, May 19:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14623031.htm

Posted by: climber May 23 2006, 07:34 PM

I heard this week on the radio that the whole USA "space" budget for this year is : Nasa 17Billion + "military" 25Billion. I don't know if the figure is right but that's much more than ESA for sure.

Posted by: ljk4-1 May 23 2006, 08:15 PM

Looks like they had a plan similar to the one from the AW&ST article
back in 1959:

http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/popmech.html


And the Estes concept from 1970:

http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/modelrk.html