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GIGANTIC Aviation Week story, Pentagon has been flying 2-stage orbital spaceplane throughout 1990s&#
Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Mar 6 2006, 02:24 AM
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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_*
post Mar 8 2006, 11:04 AM
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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.'
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gndonald
post Mar 17 2006, 04:14 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 8 2006, 07:04 PM) *
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...


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.
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Posts in this topic
- BruceMoomaw   GIGANTIC Aviation Week story   Mar 6 2006, 02:24 AM
- - tasp   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 5 2006, 08:24 PM...   Mar 6 2006, 02:56 AM
- - mcaplinger   Interesting, but I don't think AW&ST's...   Mar 6 2006, 02:58 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Whatever happened to the "donuts on a rope...   Mar 6 2006, 03:44 AM
- - deglr6328   Completely fascinating. Virtually all the details...   Mar 6 2006, 06:30 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Jeffrey Bell is really worried about the threat fr...   Mar 6 2006, 11:44 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Jeffrey Bell, that eternal party-pooper, caught no...   Mar 6 2006, 07:54 AM
|- - paxdan   The set up described reminds me of the Tagboard pr...   Mar 6 2006, 11:37 AM
|- - tty   Actually this is a rather typical Jeff Bell effort...   Mar 6 2006, 07:56 PM
- - Myran   Thats very insightful deglr6328, and without enoug...   Mar 6 2006, 11:36 AM
- - edstrick   ET Phone Area-51? Actually, I've recently rea...   Mar 6 2006, 12:00 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   Here are grabs from the AW&ST website: http:/...   Mar 6 2006, 01:25 PM
- - Ames   Where does the undercarriage go? doesn't ...   Mar 6 2006, 02:16 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (tty @ Mar 6 2006, 07:56 PM) Fortun...   Mar 6 2006, 10:53 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Footnote: the Titan 2 second stage weighed 29,000 ...   Mar 6 2006, 11:15 PM
|- - tasp   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 6 2006, 05:15 PM...   Mar 7 2006, 02:59 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (tasp @ Mar 7 2006, 02:59 AM) We ca...   Mar 7 2006, 10:23 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   One *possible* vehicle which may form part of a so...   Mar 7 2006, 04:36 PM
- - tty   Well, I’ve been doing some more figuring and I mus...   Mar 7 2006, 08:43 PM
- - dvandorn   Just a little gedankenexperiment, here -- anyone c...   Mar 7 2006, 09:48 PM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Mar 7 2006, 09:48 PM) J...   Mar 7 2006, 09:57 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Mar 7 2006, 09:48 PM) J...   Mar 7 2006, 10:08 PM
|- - JTN   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Mar 7 2006, 10:08 PM) C...   Mar 7 2006, 10:44 PM
- - dvandorn   Good point, Alex -- NRO probably would run such an...   Mar 7 2006, 10:02 PM
- - dvandorn   I'm not trying to imply conspiracies -- though...   Mar 7 2006, 10:32 PM
- - dvandorn   I have to admit, when I saw the Blackstar story, t...   Mar 7 2006, 10:57 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   According to the article, not even the nation...   Mar 8 2006, 01:26 AM
- - GregM   So let’s see here. To start with we have the Valky...   Mar 8 2006, 04:02 AM
- - tty   Also remember that there is a school of thought th...   Mar 8 2006, 07:24 AM
|- - paxdan   Lots of info about the XB-70 What an aircraft...   Mar 8 2006, 09:58 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Jim Oberg on MSNBC.Com Space News summed up the Bo...   Mar 8 2006, 11:09 AM
|- - Steve G   QUOTE (paxdan @ Mar 8 2006, 02:58 AM) Lot...   Mar 17 2006, 02:56 AM
|- - GregM   QUOTE (Steve G @ Mar 17 2006, 02:56 AM) I...   Mar 17 2006, 03:45 AM
|- - dvandorn   In re the Avro Arrow: QUOTE (GregM @ Mar 16 ...   Mar 18 2006, 03:19 PM
|- - Steve G   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Mar 18 2006, 08:19 AM) ...   Mar 18 2006, 09:03 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   It should be remembered that there is still -- to ...   Mar 8 2006, 11:04 AM
|- - paxdan   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 8 2006, 11:04 AM...   Mar 8 2006, 11:11 AM
|- - tty   [quote name='BruceMoomaw' date='Mar 8 ...   Mar 8 2006, 11:18 PM
|- - gndonald   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 8 2006, 07:04 PM...   Mar 17 2006, 04:14 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (gndonald @ Mar 17 2006, 04:14 PM) ...   Mar 17 2006, 08:40 PM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Mar 17 2006, 03:40 PM) ...   Mar 17 2006, 09:38 PM
- - edstrick   I believe "AirCraftFilms", the companion...   Mar 8 2006, 12:41 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Mar 8 2006, 11:09 AM) J...   Mar 8 2006, 01:27 PM
|- - ljk4-1   I found this post from the FPSPACE list very inter...   Mar 8 2006, 02:49 PM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 8 2006, 01:27 PM...   Mar 8 2006, 04:48 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Mar 8 2006, 04:48 ...   Mar 9 2006, 12:39 AM
|- - ljk4-1   It is a known fact that the CIA and USSR "sup...   Mar 9 2006, 03:56 PM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 9 2006, 12:39 AM...   Mar 9 2006, 04:55 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Okay, but a magazine which (according to you) is c...   Mar 9 2006, 09:17 PM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 9 2006, 09:17 PM...   Mar 9 2006, 09:32 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Mar 9 2006, 09:32 ...   Mar 10 2006, 05:24 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   From Wikipedia: "One notable variant of the ...   Mar 10 2006, 09:46 AM
|- - ljk4-1   Blackstar: False Messiah From Groom Lake http://w...   Mar 10 2006, 12:16 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Bell, having now read the two other Aviation Week ...   Mar 11 2006, 11:31 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Is it a bad sign when Jeffrey Bell starts agreeing...   Mar 11 2006, 11:37 AM
|- - gpurcell   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Mar 11 2006, 11:37 AM) ...   Mar 12 2006, 02:23 AM
- - tty   Here it is Jeff Bell who is off speculating in the...   Mar 12 2006, 04:45 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (tty @ Mar 12 2006, 04:45 PM) If yo...   Mar 12 2006, 09:17 PM
- - ljk4-1   Six blind men in a zoo: Aviation Week's mythic...   Mar 13 2006, 05:13 PM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Mar 13 2006, 05:13 P...   Mar 13 2006, 05:25 PM
|- - helvick   QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Mar 13 2006, 05:25...   Mar 13 2006, 06:04 PM
- - gpurcell   Ouch, that's GOTTA hurt.   Mar 13 2006, 07:01 PM
- - tty   Just one small point. That nuclear-powered soviet ...   Mar 13 2006, 07:05 PM
- - ljk4-1   This Web page has excerpts from the 1958 AW&ST...   Mar 13 2006, 07:29 PM
- - Myran   Two US built nuclear jet engines at Idaho National...   Mar 13 2006, 09:53 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Having finally read all of Dwayne Day's story,...   Mar 18 2006, 03:51 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 18 2006, 03:51 A...   Mar 18 2006, 01:36 PM
|- - gpurcell   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Mar 18 2006, 01:36 PM) ...   Mar 18 2006, 01:58 PM
|- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (gpurcell @ Mar 18 2006, 01:58 PM) ...   Mar 19 2006, 01:16 AM
|- - AlexBlackwell   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Mar 19 2006, 01:16 A...   Mar 20 2006, 05:13 PM
- - ljk4-1   http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/ne...60406...   Apr 12 2006, 06:23 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Four more Aviation Week letters on the BlackStar s...   Apr 21 2006, 01:20 PM
- - tty   Piggybacking on a B-70 would not be a good idea ae...   Apr 21 2006, 05:07 PM
- - ljk4-1   Black projects don't seem to be having any bud...   May 23 2006, 07:09 PM
- - climber   I heard this week on the radio that the whole USA ...   May 23 2006, 07:34 PM
- - ljk4-1   Looks like they had a plan similar to the one from...   May 23 2006, 08:15 PM


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