AWST: Two-Stage-to-Orbit Manned 'Blackstar' System
Jim Oberg
Aviation Week & Space Technology
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/030606p1.xml
Two-Stage-to-Orbit 'Blackstar' System Shelved at Groom Lake?
By William B. Scott
03/05/2006 04:07:33 PM
SPACEPLANE SHELVED?
For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has investigated
myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small
military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence
of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted
that it's "out there," but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards
has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this innovative
"Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we've
learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing
technological breakthrough vanish into "black world" history, known to only
a few insiders. U.S. intelligence agencies may have quietly mothballed a
highly classified two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system designed in the 1980s
for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery. It
could be a victim of shrinking federal budgets strained by war costs, or it
may not have met performance or operational goals.
This two-vehicle "Blackstar" carrier/orbiter system may have
been declared operational during the 1990s.
.
Bob Haller
future of space travel. it was already here....
the obvious question why build CEV when something more capable already
exists or could be updated? for manned crew?
another question if columbias damage had been detected could this
vehicle have taken emergency supplies and or save some or all of the
crew?
take emergency supplies up, bring back a few crew members on the way
down?
Ten Quidado
Damn, I wish my father in law was alive to read this so that I could watch
his face. He was a skunk and would certainly have worked on this if it were
real.
"Jim Oberg" <james...@houston.rr.com> wrote in message
news:otNOf.5755$gm....@tornado.texas.rr.com...
H2-PV NOW
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/030606p1.xml
More from this story:
"... One logical explanation given for why a Blackstar system is
developed says that, after the shuttle Challenger disaster in January
1986, and a subsequent string of expendable-booster failures, Pentagon
leaders were stunned to learn they no longer had "assured access to
space." Suddenly, the U.S. needed a means to orbit satellites necessary
to keep tabs on its Cold War adversaries.
A team of contractors apparently stepped forward, offering to build a
quick-reaction TSTO system in record time. The system could ensure
on-demand overflight reconnaissance/surveillance from low Earth orbit,
and would require minimal development time. Tons of material--including
long-lead structural items--for a third XB-70 Valkyrie had been stored
in California warehouses years before, and a wealth of data from the
X-20 DynaSoar military spaceplane program was readily available for
application to a modern orbiter (see following articles). ..."
SO... How credible is the concept of "build a quick-reaction TSTO
system in record time"? Just how long does it take? I said a SSTO
could reach orbit at LEO to ISS by 2011, but that was predicated on not
haveing an Uncle Sugar Deep-Pockets, and paying for it the honest way.
According to AVIATION WEEK, which is not entirely ignorant of flight
characteristics, this TSTO may have flown in the early 1990s. Or less
than 4 years from the Uh-Oh moment of the Challenger wreck.
The first Lifting Body, the M2-F1 was operational within a year of
conception, built for $30,000. If they had our materials and our
knowledgebase that we have now, It probably could have made a re-entry
from ISS and survived the trip to land. That was 1962 technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_M2-F1
Ten years after the First SSTO arrives with a cargo of 40 tons to LEO
and lands at an airport of choice, there will be nobody left on Earth
who even thinks it is difficult. There are at least some who don't
think it is difficult (or "impossibly difficult") right now before it
has been done.
There's a lot of flak being shot at anybody who even wants to talk
about it. part of that might be from wounded ego, "If I couldn't think
of it, then surely nobody else can either".
But some of it might be coming from those who want to keep their "area
51" toy the king-of-the-hill, and chase off anybody from figuring out a
better, bigger, cheaper solution that somebody is sure to think up some
day no matter how hard they try to hold a monopoly.
Again, going back to the link:
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/030606p1.xml
"... In XB-70 Valkyrie: The Ride to Valhalla, Jeannette Remak and Joe
Ventolo, Jr., wrote: "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." ..."
A 10,000 pound payload is far short from 80,000, but a
robotically-controlled orbiter can insert signficant quantities in
orbit if it flies 8 missions to any SSTO's one. Both parts of the
system are presumably re-usable with minimal overhaul down-time between
flights -- almost touch-and-go pitstops.
The total fuel for both stages is far below the 8,000,000 pounds the
shuttle uses for only five times the payload. The mother ship spends an
hour or two in the air. The orbiter burns for an hour or less. It
hardly seems sensible that they both need to go into the shop for two
months of overhauls?
ed kyle
> AWST: Two-Stage-to-Orbit Manned 'Blackstar' System
>
> Aviation Week & Space Technology
>
> http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/030606p1.xml
When I read these stories, I keep reminding myself that
one of the most important tools of the intelligence trade
is disinformation.
- Ed Kyle
David E. Powell
Maybe. It would be pretty cool if we actually had such a plane. If so,
tossing it would seem to be throwing away a great asset and a great
advantage in the space race.
ed kyle
Think about this one.
If the U.S. did have a quick response orbital surveillance system,
what are the ethical considerations of it not being used to have
a close look at Columbia in orbit back in 2003?
I think it is possible that the U.S. developed an SR-71 replacement
for quick response surveillance missions, but I'm not sure it would
need to have been an orbital system.
- Ed Kyle
Joe D.
news:otNOf.5755$gm....@tornado.texas.rr.com...
>
> Aviation Week & Space Technology
>
> http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/030606p1.xml
>
>
>
> Two-Stage-to-Orbit 'Blackstar' System Shelved at Groom Lake?
>
Jim, thanks for posting that. The article has much more information than
the technically threadbare popular press articles (your own excluded, of
course). It makes a good case something like that existed.
However -- basic calculations and commonsense weigh somewhat
in opposition:
(1) There's less performance advantage to air launching than is commonly
thought. According to this AIAA paper:
http://mae.ucdavis.edu/faculty/sarigul/aiaa2001-4619.pdf
"Surprisingly, a typical straight and level subsonic horizontal air launch
such as used by the X-15 research rocketplane does not result in any
significant changes in the delta V requirement as compared to a baseline
vertical surface launch."
Of course if you launch at Mach 3, you'll get about 3 Mach numbers
(out of 25 required) advantage.
(2) The AW&ST article said using warehoused XB-70 structural
elements expedited completing the mothership. The actual B-70 would
have had a 20,000 payload. That's not nearly enough
for a man-carrying orbiter. The X-15A2 weighed 56,000 lbs and couldn't
remotely achieve orbit.
(3) Actual mothership payload requirement for orbital captive vehicle
with meaningful payload is huge, unless *very* exotic fuels are used.
The X-15A2 only achieved about 6% of orbital energy. You
can't count velocity or altitude as a % of orbit, but must count
kinetic energy (KE=1/2*m*v^2).
(4) The article is right about needing a superfuel. To achieve
orbit from a Mach 3 air-dropped X-15A2-size/weight vehicle with a
an approx. 0.9 mass fraction and a 5,000 lb payload, you'd
need about 500 seconds specific impulse. IOW you'd need
to burn liquid fluorine and liquid lithium, or something similar.
Delta-V calculator:
http://www.strout.net/info/science/delta-v/intro.html
(5) High cost of developing launcher. The XB-70 was very
expensive in the 1960s, and an improved version would likewise
be expensive today. It's a big Mach 3 aircraft, for crying out loud!
(6) Amateur observation from the ground means it's unlikely
an orbital military spaceplane would long remains secret. As you
can see from this image, a large group of amateur satellite
observers are constantly scouring the sky for anything new,
and they have equipment for fairly high resolution imaging:
http://tinyurl.com/k4aqc
A small spaceplane would be harder to spot, but it would
eventually be seen. And of course some foreign powers have
much more sophisticated satellite observation methods.
So is it possible the Blackstar orbiter and XB-70-type launcher
existed? Sure. However the cost seems very high relative to the
returned capability.
-- Joe D.
Brian Thorn
>If the U.S. did have a quick response orbital surveillance system,
>what are the ethical considerations of it not being used to have
>a close look at Columbia in orbit back in 2003?
Only senior NASA personnel may have been aware it existed (if it did)
and the request for DoD imagery of Columbia never rose that high.
Also, I don't think AvLeak mentions any sightings after 1998, so it
might have already been retired by then.
>I think it is possible that the U.S. developed an SR-71 replacement
>for quick response surveillance missions, but I'm not sure it would
>need to have been an orbital system.
The article states the vehicle wasn't necessarily orbital.
Brian
mol...@hotmail.com
> (6) Amateur observation from the ground means it's unlikely
> an orbital military spaceplane would long remains secret. As you
> can see from this image, a large group of amateur satellite
> observers are constantly scouring the sky for anything new
You are overly optimistic about hobbyist capabilities. A very small
number of us have the required skills, and we do not constantly scour
the sky for anything new.
To identify a new secret orbiting object we must: spot it, make
positional observations sufficient to compute a preliminary orbit, make
additional positional observations over several days, refine the
orbital elements, and compare them against those of known objects.
Worldwide, there are about 20 hobbyist observers who make the precise
positional observations required to determine an object's orbital
elements. Only about half a dozen are very active, most of whom are
located within a small geographical area, so our coverage is poor.
Instead of scanning for new objects, virtually all of our effort goes
into tracking about 150 objects that we have previously discovered over
many years, for which official orbital elements are not published. If
we do not track them regularly and update their orbital elements, we
will lose them.
Of course, we see many other objects at random, but we seldom have the
time or interest to make the measurements required to identify them.
Despite these limitations, experience has shown that we are reasonably
likely to randomly detect and determine the orbit of a bright new
object, say, magnitude 2 or brighter, within about 3 to 12 months of
launch.
I suspect that the orbital mission of a spaceplane would be fairly
brief, so unless they were launched very frequently, and were very
bright, we would have been very lucky to spot and identify it as
something new.
We might expect better luck with a spaceplane's payload, if
sufficiently bright and long-lived in orbit.
Ted Molczan
Jim Oberg
"Joe D." <> wrote wisdom
Thanks, Joe-D. You be a real rocket scientist, fer shoor.
Brian Thorn
wrote:
>(5) High cost of developing launcher. The XB-70 was very
>expensive in the 1960s, and an improved version would likewise
>be expensive today. It's a big Mach 3 aircraft, for crying out loud!
AvLeak says it might have been limited to Mach 1 or 2 to save money
and ease construction (although that seems at odds with their
suggestion that it was built from spares leftover from the XB-70
program.) Also, note that the new theorized mothership only has four
engines, not the XB-70s "six pack" and the XB-70 engines weren't
exactly whimpy to start with. I doubt the mothership could do Mach 3.
Brian
Joe D.
news:1141694181.3...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> Joe D. wrote:
>
>> (6) Amateur observation from the ground means it's unlikely
>> an orbital military spaceplane would long remains secret. As you
>> can see from this image, a large group of amateur satellite
>> observers are constantly scouring the sky for anything new
>
> You are overly optimistic about hobbyist capabilities. A very small
> number of us have the required skills, and we do not constantly scour
>...
> I suspect that the orbital mission of a spaceplane would be fairly
> brief, so unless they were launched very frequently, and were very
> bright, we would have been very lucky to spot and identify it as
>
Ted, thanks for the insight. I guess there's a chance
Blackstar could have orbited unseen after all.
-- Joe D.
John Doe
> > number of us have the required skills, and we do not constantly scour
> > the sky for anything new...
The way I read the poster's point was that spotters would see the object
being launched and/or land, as opposed the assumption that it would be
spotted in orbit.
Joe D.
I was actually referring to spotting the object in orbit, so Ted's
statement would apply.
-- Joe D.
Al
Al
<mol...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1141694181.3...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
ed kyle
> (2) The AW&ST article said using warehoused XB-70 structural
> elements expedited completing the mothership. The actual B-70 would
> have had a 20,000 payload. That's not nearly enough
> for a man-carrying orbiter. The X-15A2 weighed 56,000 lbs and couldn't
> remotely achieve orbit.
It seems more likey to me that an unmanned suborbital
sortie vehicle or a boost-glide vehicle would have been
carried. For example, an upgraded XB-70 might have been
able to carry one of these things (Lockheed's Hypersonic
Glide Vehicle)
"http://www.astronautix.com/craft/hgv.htm"
which it says might have weighed in at 11.3 tonnes
(24,916 pounds) loaded and 2 tonnes empty and
had a range of 8,000 km.
> (4) The article is right about needing a superfuel. To achieve
> orbit from a Mach 3 air-dropped X-15A2-size/weight vehicle with a
> an approx. 0.9 mass fraction and a 5,000 lb payload, you'd
> need about 500 seconds specific impulse. IOW you'd need
> to burn liquid fluorine and liquid lithium, or something similar.
> Delta-V calculator:
> http://www.strout.net/info/science/delta-v/intro.html
With 465 seconds specfic impulse (achievable with liquid
hydrogen), and a drop mass of 10 tonnes, it would be
possible to add 7,700 meters/sec delta-v to a 1.86 tonne payload,
possibly enough for a minimal orbit, but that would include every
ounce of a the small unmanned "spaceplane"! By comparison,
X-15 weighed 5.16 tonnes empty. A small deployed boost stage
would be needed to put anything useful into orbit, turning the
spaceplane into a suborbital second stage.
It would be much easier, and probably less expensive, to
just use a Pegasus or similar subsonic air-launched
rocket to perform a "pop-up" mission. An XB-70 might cost
$3 billion or more today. Such a craft would have to perform
a lot of orbital missions to amortize just its development and
operating cost against Pegasus, which goes for probably
$30 million per mission. If the spaceplane cost another
$3 billion or more, than the system would have to perform
way more than 200 missions before cost savings could begin
to be realized. I suppose, however, that you could do some
things with the "mother ship" that Orbital Sciences could not
do with its L-1011!
Pegasus has been off the radar screen during recent years,
not flying at all (as far as we know) in 2001 and 2004 and only
once in 2002 and 2005.
- Ed Kyle
ed kyle
>
> (2) The AW&ST article said using warehoused XB-70 structural
> elements expedited completing the mothership. The actual B-70 would
> have had a 20,000 payload. That's not nearly enough
> for a man-carrying orbiter.
It appears that the 20,000 pound payload was a maximum
range specification. Range could be traded for payload with
the XB-70, which could be loaded with up to 136 tonnes
(300,000 lbs) of JP6 fuel. Some writings suggest that a
50,000 payload was possible.
I think it might be possible to get 4 tonnes to orbit (including
the orbited "spaceplane" mass) with a 22.68 tonne (50,000 lb)
drop mass (see my other post in this thread). I still think the
orbited "payload" would more likely be unmanned.
- Ed Kyle
Bob Haller
So if this program was retired wonder what replaced it:)???????
ed kyle
> MILITARY ALWAYS ADVANCES TO SOMETHING BETTER!
>
> So if this program was retired wonder what replaced it:)???????
This would not have been "military". It would have been
"spook". Some spooks, especially the CIA, are good at
wasting lots of money for little result (see Hughes Glomar
Explorer). Other spooks do better, like NSA during the
1960s-70s with Corona and its follow ons and the sub-spooks
who tapped Soviet undersea cables during the 70s. Which
spook outfit would have had control of this system is anyone's
guess. It seems likely to me that the spook agencies we
know about, like NSA with its acres of computers, etc.,
are the ones that don't do anything anymore. Instead,
there are other outfits that we don't know about.
As for military advancing to something better - only as long
as the country can afford it. At some point, as the empire
starts to decline, the hardware gets shoddy or simply
becomes obsolete faster than it can be replaced. Consider
the British Emprire's exploding cruisers at Jutland, for
example.
- Ed Kyle
Herb Schaltegger
(in article <1141835847.1...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
> At some point, as the empire starts to decline, the hardware gets shoddy or
> simply becomes obsolete faster than it can be replaced. Consider the British
> Emprire's exploding cruisers at Jutland, for example.
Bad, nay, TERRIBLE example. The British Empire was still at it's
height and had no real trouble affording the naval arms race that led
up to WWI.
Losses at Jutland were a procedures/training issue much more so than a
technical failure of British design or construction methods. Pre-War
years had been spent training for speed, speed and more speed in
gunnery drills, resultiing in flash doors being left open and stacks of
powder charges shoved wherever they would fit in order to speed gun
loading. Read Massie's "Castles of Steel" for more background.
--
Herb
"Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which,
unfortunately, no one we know belongs."
~Anonymous
ed kyle
> On Wed, 8 Mar 2006 10:37:27 -0600, ed kyle wrote
> (in article <1141835847.1...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
>
> > At some point, as the empire starts to decline, the hardware gets shoddy or
> > simply becomes obsolete faster than it can be replaced. Consider the British
>
> > Emprire's exploding cruisers at Jutland, for example.
>
> Bad, nay, TERRIBLE example. The British Empire was still at it's
> height and had no real trouble affording the naval arms race that led
> up to WWI.
The U.S. and Germany surpassed British industrial power by
1900, by which time Britain was running a huge trade deficit.
So the "decline" had already begun by the time of the Great
War.
But I could have selected a better example. The British
battlecruiser problem at Jutland is most often reported to
have been the result of a flawed design concept - the
decision not to armor the battlecruisers against the
shells of enemy ships in the same class. The flawed
idea was that speed would win over firepower. Three
sunk battlecruisers and more than 3,000 lost lives
proved otherwise.
Would a more economically powerful Britain have been able
to test the fast battlecruiser idea more thoroughly before
commiting it to battle?
- Ed Kyle
Herb Schaltegger
(in article <1141842451.6...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
>
> Would a more economically powerful Britain have been able to test the fast
> battlecruiser idea more thoroughly before commiting it to battle?
>
Unlikely since WWI was the first war worthy of the term after the
concept was introduced and the ships built.
Note, too, that Britain didn't lack for battleships at Jutland.
Numbers were not an issue.
David...@gmail.com
of the world to observe and report missle launches. Doesn't Russia have
something similar to watch North America? If so, wouldn't an air launch
like this trigger a detection/warning system like that?
Regardless of that technology, any sort of air launch *should* have a
visible trail with either a smoke trail or a visible exhaust plume,
right? (I'm no expert, so don't treat this post as one either). Given
that, both a daytime and nighttime launch would have an observational
probablity - though you could minimize that with a launch over the
ocean or head north to Canada, etc.
Malcolm Street
> But I could have selected a better example. The British
> battlecruiser problem at Jutland is most often reported to
> have been the result of a flawed design concept - the
> decision not to armor the battlecruisers against the
> shells of enemy ships in the same class. The flawed
> idea was that speed would win over firepower. Three
> sunk battlecruisers and more than 3,000 lost lives
> proved otherwise.
>
> Would a more economically powerful Britain have been able
> to test the fast battlecruiser idea more thoroughly before
> commiting it to battle?
>
> - Ed Kyle
One major factor in the loss of the British battlecruisers at Jutland was
cordite flash, a sort of chain reaction down the supply chain from the
turrets to the magazines. The Germans learnt about it the hard way at the
battle of Dogger Bank in 1915, when the battlecruiser Seydlitz lost both
its rear turrets and was lucky not to sink. After that they brought in
better safety procedures (notably ensuring that at no stage was there a
clear path from turret to magazine) which ensured that it wouldn't happen
again.
The first time it happened to the British was at Jutland; I think 2 of the 3
battlecruisers were lost to cordite flash, the last one from a direct hit
to the magazines. The British also learnt from it and made procedural
changes (and, I think, made changes to their cordite formulation and
standards). More generally, the lessons from Jutland were incorporated
into Repulse/Renown and the Hood, which were then under construction, with
extra armour. So they did learn from it and had the money to do something
about it.
As for the battlecruiser concept it depends how they were used. Fisher's
original idea was the "speed is armour" and, like the pocket battleships of
the 1930's, they could "outrun what they couldn't outgun". They were also
a Dreadnought-like development of the pre-Dreadnought armoured cruiser
concept. Note that British battlecruisers made mincemeat of German
armoured cruisers at the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands. They
also defeated a German battlecruiser force at Dogger Bank. The problem
came when they were up against a big fleet of large ships, as at Jutland.
Now the loss of the Hood in WW2, that's another story... (if you believe one
theory, to do with anti-aircraft rocket storage)
--
Malcolm Street
Canberra, Australia
The nation's capital
Malcolm Street
> SPACEPLANE SHELVED?
>
> For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology has
> investigated
> myriad sightings of a two-stage-to-orbit system that could place a small
> military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence
> of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted
> that it's "out there," but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST
> standards has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this
> innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share
> what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an
> intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into "black world" history,
> known to only a few insiders. U.S. intelligence agencies may have quietly
> mothballed a highly classified two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane system
> designed in the 1980s for reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and,
> possibly, weapons delivery. It could be a victim of shrinking federal
> budgets strained by war costs, or it may not have met performance or
> operational goals.
>
> This two-vehicle "Blackstar" carrier/orbiter system may have
> been declared operational during the 1990s.
A few thoughts:
0. There's been rumours about something like this for years. Unless AWST
has been very well snowed, I'm now certain it exists. However it may be
only a prototype and it may not be able to do all that is claimed (ie
TSTO).
1. The upper stage isn't a pure rocket. The article mentions air intakes.
It also mentions a new material able to stand very high heat, and mentions
channels/vanes etc being used to dissipate heat. All this to me suggests
an air breather, probably a scramjet. Note that one major criticism of
scramjets as launchers has been higher heat build-up due to a shallower
climb through the atmosphere.
2. the channels/vanes etc go against every rule of hypersonic vehicle design
I know of. Qv John Anderson's "Hypersonic and High Temperature Gas
Dynamics; he points out that hypersonic shapes have to be relatively blunt
(qv Shuttle and DynaSoar) to radiate sufficient heat while retaining
structural strength. This suggests that whatever this new material is is a
quantum breakthrough in high-temperature strength and stiffness.
3. to my knowledge no-one has suggested an aerospike for a scramjet; all net
thrust-producing scramjet concepts I've seen have a half-nozzle built into
the rear of the aircraft. My guess is that it has a rocket engine which
fires twice; once to accelerate the machine from Mach 3.3 to Mach 6
(scramjet ignition speed) and then at the end of the scramjet phase for the
final boost to orbit. Hence the aerospike; these two conditions would
occur at very different altitudes.
4. I'd assume there's still some sort of active airframe cooling involved.
But with what? Oxidiser for the rocket engine, as someone has suggested?
5. Is the boron fuel used by both jet and rocket phases?
6. Yes boron fuels were tried decades ago and abandoned. Two differences in
this case: it doesn't have any turbine blades (erosion of which was a
major problem in running turbojets on boron compounds) and it is being
fired off at say 90,000 feet, which gets around the poisonous exhaust
problem.
7. In contrast the "mothership" is pretty simple. Four engines instead of
the six of the B-70; hmm, 4 x P&W J-58s a la Blackbird should be able to
push a plane of that size to Mach 3 plus without R&D on a new engine.
8. My guess about why it's coming out now is the people who built it don't
want to see it retired without letting the world know what they've
achieved, even if, like Concorde and the Shuttle, it's a technological
wonder but a financial disaster that's never lived up to its promise. Or
it could be spooks wanting to hang onto the capability, despite the cost.
Boy we're in for an interesting time as further info leaks out! :-)
John Doe
> achieved, even if, like Concorde and the Shuttle, it's a technological
> wonder but a financial disaster that's never lived up to its promise. Or
> it could be spooks wanting to hang onto the capability, despite the cost.
The shuttle *concept* is being retired , replaced by 1960s capsule
basically because technology hasn't advanced enough to make an
affordable and dependable heat shield. The actual STS system is old,
but if it were rebuilt with today's technology, a lot of its internal
systems would be made reliable and modern and much cheaper to operate.
But the heat shield still remains a barrier.
Now, if the military ressearchers had made significant advances in a
"shuttle" concept, perhaps this is why they are leaking the info so that
at least people know that they may in fact be technology out there to
make significant enough advances to reconsider the shuttle concept.
On the other hand, except for radar reflecting paint, has the military
really made any significant secret advances in technology in recent
times that were totally way ahead of what is public ?
They may have very interesting secret applications of existing
technology, they may have built stuff which is commercially not viable
due to cost or limited material availability, and they may have pushed
existing technology to new limits, but have they made truly radical
discoveries on how to make a totally new type of engine, a type that was
never imagined outside of the military before ?
Have they got matter/anti-matter cores running, and small fusion
reactors installed in aircraft ? Didn't think so.
If they have some sort of scramjet or air breathing engine, it is
probably roughtly at the same stage of development as civil ones, with
the difference that the military is probably more willing to risk lives
in testing it.
Also, don't forget that the military will also leak such stuff to make
people believe they are actually much more advanced than they really
are. It is to their advantage if there is a rumour that they can see
licence plate numbers on a car in traffic from a satellite. They
certaintly wouldn't want to admit that their real capabilities are
inferior to what Hollywood portrays them to be.
Have they tested a titanium skinned shuttle ? Maybe. NASA certaintly
doesn't have budgets for that, but the military has unlimited budgets.
But that is not a huge breakthrough in technology, it is just having the
budgets to test a known technology that is very expensive to test.
Jan Vorbrüggen
> basically because technology hasn't advanced enough to make an
> affordable and dependable heat shield.
I believe that is incorrect. Several years ago, the heat shield material
that was forseen for the X-33 was tested on figher jets flying through
rain, and it came through well.
> On the other hand, except for radar reflecting paint, has the military
> really made any significant secret advances in technology in recent
> times that were totally way ahead of what is public ?
Surprisingly, it appears that GCHQ (the British analogon to the NSA, if
there is such a thing at all) seems to have invented asymmetric crypto-
graphy years before RSA - see Singh's book The Code Breakers on this.
Jan