Boeing Bird of Prey Stealth Fighter

An anonymous submitter writes: "Revealed: Boeings new secret stealth bat-plane! For years stealthchasers (those guys who sneak around secret USAF test bases in search of secret aircraft) knew the Bird Of Prey existed. They knew it was being tested over the secluded Nellis Air Force Base ranges in Nevada. They knew what hangar it was being secreted away in at Nellis (on the northeast corner) and they even managed to obtain a squadron patch depicting the aircraft itself!... but the government still denied its existance until today. At a ceremony at Boeing's St Louis plant their super-secret Bird Of Prey batplane was revealed today for the world to see and marvel at. You can view exclusive photos of it at popsci.com and projectblack.net."

Comments

It's a bird...

[kingOFgEEEks]

... it's a plane, it's...

(bombs exploding everywhere)

[Tango 2 to Mother Hen, The egg is in the basket]

Does this mean that Aurora exists as well?

[ewanrg]

Cool looking plane, but it does make one wonder if the fabled "Project Aurora" (spaceplane) also exists. Goodness knows the shape is similar to some of the stories that have been put out there about it (for example, here).

Re:Does this mean that Aurora exists as well?

[pjgunst]

Well, I guess we won't know until they retire the Aurora design. The US gov wouldn't allow them to make it public unless you have the ideal circumstances like this Bird of Prey:

1. Design itself is retired.

2. No special technology on display (the bird of prey doesn't even have a computer and uses a bussines jet engine).

3. Only early prototypes (the bird of prey is a minimalistic design).

So I wouldn't expect an early announcement of the existence of a spaceplane...

Bird of Prey, eh?

[LordYUK]

So is it Romulan or Klingon?

Re:Bird of Prey, eh?

[Psion]

According to the PopSci site, Klingon.

And you thought you were joking, didn't you?

not exactly tailless!

[TenderMuffin]

it's not exactly a tail-less aircraft as some have said

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2002/photore le ase/q4/high_res/dvd-226-5.jpg

as you can clearly see in that picture (very high res, modem users beware!), the tail is beneath the plane, instead of the traditional spot, on top of the plane

it is pretty small, though

Re:not exactly tailless!

[hondo77]

Click here for the correct URL (there's a space in the one above).

Only imagine what they have now...

[Mithrander]

The Bird's innovative features are sure to inform the design of next-generation stealth aircraft, but the plane itself, having served its purpose, is being retired--which is why Boeing and the Air Force were willing to make it public today.

Exactly. If they're making this public, then it's nowhere near the cutting edge anymore. Imagine what sort of stuff is in the "top-secret" category now?

Re:Only imagine what they have now...

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

If they're making this public, then it's nowhere near the cutting edge anymore. Imagine what sort of stuff is in the "top-secret" category now?

Which is exactly the line of reasoning I use when people are creeped out by terraserver.com or the areial images on mapquest.
Then they're really creeped out.

Re:Only imagine what they have now...

[Guppy06]

"If they're making this public, then it's nowhere near the cutting edge anymore."

Except the only cutting-edge technology that counts is what you can get to the battlefield in question. It doesn't matter if what they're playing with now in the middle of Nevada makes the F-22 look like a Sopwith Camel, the F-22 is what we can deploy and have deployed right now.

Of course this doesn't make these black projects any less interesting to think about...

Gulf war?

[PissingInTheWind]

Didn't the U.S. military did something similar in revealing officialy the F-117
shortly before attacking Irak the first time?

Re:Gulf war?

[cygnus]

Didn't the U.S. military did something similar in revealing officialy the F-117 shortly before attacking Irak the first time?

when we "invaded" panama during the regan years (i use scare quotes 'cause we were already there... hard to invade a country you're already basically occupying), that was the first time the public was made aware of the F-117.

well, wouldntcha know it, the government let slip that it's been keeping a new jet secret -- just in time for another unnecessary war against another dictator it imposed and now sees fit to blow up!

way to parade the forces to the proles to get us to rally around the flag, bushie!

...sorry. i've been reading too much Chomsky. :-P

Boeing is desparate...

[UnidentifiedCoward]

to revinvent themselves. Notice the PopSci article makes more of statement about prototype development and not the physical aircraft itself which it built with speed and at reduced cost. The Phantom Works is Boeing's answer to Lockheed's Skunk Works which was made famous by the SR-71 which it produced went from drawing boarding to aircraft (and subsquently speed records) in 18 months.

With Boeing losing so much ground in the commerical markets to Airbus it really needs to prove to the USAF and the military at large that is a prime contender.

Quite frankly this is an expensive PR campaign whose prime audience is not the commerical markets, but the U.S. and NATO military.

Re:I wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

For starters, your wife actually did have that affair.

er, "Klingon" Bird of Prey?

[imac.usr]

The Bird of Prey (it looks more like the Klingon Bird of Prey from Star Trek than any feathered creature) is a prototype for a very stealthy fighter or tactical bomber.

/begin TREK_GEEK
I was always under the impression that the Bird of Prey was a Romulan design, as first revealed in the TOS episode "Balance of Terror". I don't recall the Klingon version appearing until "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock", and the canonical explanation was that the Romulans and Klingons had entered into a sort-of free-trade agreement for sharing technology.... /end TREK_GEEK

...but it's been a long time since I studied any of this stuff hard-core. (I'm married now. :P)

Re:er, "Klingon" Bird of Prey?

[blincoln]

Star Trek III's Bird of Prey was original written as having been commandeered from the Romulans by Kruge. Obviously this didn't make it into the final version of the film, so now the Klingons have Birds of Prey and the Romulans have Warbirds.

Last thing you want to hear a pilot say

[CaffeineAddict2001]

In a multibillion dollar aircraft:

Nananananana BAT-PLANE... BAT-PLANE... BAT-PLANE!!!... OVER. *pssh*

Re:Last thing you want to hear a pilot say

[sxltrex]

I mean "LEADER!"

Nellis

[unicron]

I have to go out to Nellis for work occasionally. Last time I was there they had two B-2 Stealth Bombers parked near the runway. Seeing one of those things from the back, I am convinced they are the cause of 95% of saucer-shaped ufo sightings in the last 20 years.

Boeing release, photos, and movies

[Gogo Dodo]

Boeing has a news release with other photos, details, and a movie. The movie is downloading real slow right now though. They've got an image of the plane on their home page, so it's being hyped up quite a bit.

Re:Boeing release, photos, and movies

[Dr Caleb]

The movie is downloading real slow right now though

And getting slower. I think we just /.ed a Bird of Prey. Now it's decloaking...firing a torpedo...S*1T![carrier lost]

It's part of UCAV development.

[bellers]

This vehicle was basically the technology demonstrator for the X-45A UCAV vehicle. If you look at it, you can see several features present in the X-45 a/c.

It did look pretty cool, though.

The highlight of the ceremony however, was the free ice cream they gave us all.

Not impressed

[llamaluvr]

It's a good start, but until they can make a plane that care survive a slashdotting, then I'm not riding.

Shares some interesting similarities with past

[quantax]

In case you are unaware, when the first proposals were made by the engineer responsible for the B2 stealth bomber, everyone said "Theres no damn way that thing is leaving the ground. That thing can't fly." I have to say, the Bird of Prey looks even more so like this. I am curious as to how it generates the lift required with such small wings. Usually, if you look at any aircraft, the wings are atleast 1/3rd - 2/3rds of the entire size of the craft (size comparison wise). The wings are tiny, along with the fact that they are nothing like traditional wings with the sharp angle mid-wing. You could say its wide, which helps, but I do not think this is the case as the bottom of the fuselage, according to those pictures, does not seem to have any characteristics required to generate lift. I think I speak for us all when I say seeing a video of this thing in action would be pretty impressive, and no doubt interesting. Due to the more narrow design, it looks as if its manuevering capabilities are much greater than that of the B2, which made VERY wide turns. Anyone have links to further details?

Re:Shares some interesting similarities with past

[Richard_at_work]

There are certyain things called "Lifting bodies" which require little wing area to fly. Granted they are not very economic designs but they do have their uses. One problem with them tho is that the more you lesson the wing area, the greater the take off and landing speeds must be (one of the reasons Groom Dry Lake has a huge runway).

Re:Score one for the Trek fans!

[dubiousmike]

I can now proudly proclaim I am a Star Trek fan in public!

No you can't...

:P

Alaska

[tsa]

Now we know what those people saw in Alaska! (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/ 17/1219240&mode=flat&tid=134)

Stealthchasers

[FreeLinux]

stealthchasers (those guys who sneak around secret USAF test bases in search of secret aircraft)

During the cold war they would have been known as spies. However, in the present they are classified as terrorists.

Sneaking around secret USAF test bases in search of secret aircraft is a great way to have your citizenship status abruptly changed to "Enemy combatant", enjoying all of the privilleges that such a title brings.

Re:Stealthchasers

[PolyDwarf]

Really?
I thought it was the way to change your status to "Dead".

So now we have a Bird of Prey...

[LordYUK]

but is it the prototype model that can shoot while cloaked, and if so does that mean the pilot has to have an eye patch bolted to his face?

Panama

[crow]

The F-117 was first used in combat in Panama in December of 1989. The Pentagon admited it existed in November of 1988.

This is just an airframe technology demonstrator

[Animats]

This is an small, unarmed test aircraft, not a fighter or an attack aircraft. The announced ceiling is 20,000 feet, with a max speed of 260 knots. Those aren't militarily useful specs. Boeing says this was a test for the technologies going into the X-45A unmanned fighter, which is likely to be an interesting vehicle.

But note the project timing, 1992-1997. This may have been a test vehicle for Boeing's bid for the Joint Strike Fighter program. (Boeing lost to Lockheed-Martin on that program.) Boeing built two announced test aircraft for that program, the X-32A and X-32B. Those were aimed at the carrier-landing and VTOL requirements. The Bird of Prey may have been a third test aircraft, to test stealth aspects.

American Maginot Line

[sssmashy]

For years now I've been hearing that stealth fighter technology is the "American Maginot Line"... all those billions of dollars have been invested in it, yet it was designed only to defeat the radars used by the former Soviet Union. I've heard that it can easily be made obsolete by using lower frequency radar, or heat-sensitive infrared radar systems. In any case, the enemy need only make a comparatively tiny investment in radar to render any form of stealth techology useless.

The Bird of Prey looks pretty, but I'm worried that it will turn out to be a costly debacle. Does anyone who knows more about this than I do than I care to comment?

Re:American Maginot Line

[lelitsch]

Actually, there is an even easier way: bistatic radar. You basically need to seperate the sender and the receiver, do some fancy math and use highly sensitive radar. There have been consistent stories that the steath planes used in the Gulf war were pretty visible on UK shipes with modern phased array radar, too. Of course a lot of that technology is boyond the reach of what are basically developing countries like Irak, Afghanistan and North Korea. But Siemens might have an even easier solution to detecting stealth bombers.

Re:American Maginot Line

[Monkeyman334]

This info was given to me by an air force PR-type guy a year ago, so I'll tell ya what I remember from it:

Conventional radar *can* detect stealth craft. Most of the stelath craft around these days reduce the cross section of the plane, not masking it completely. So if the enemy has a net of radar sites surrounding its capital city, then you can make it easier to navigate between radar sites. So they either have to pack in the sites a lot tighter or just try and get the most out of the ones they have.

Re:American Maginot Line

[Mittermeyer]

Some of your points have merit, others don't.

Stealth planes by virtue of their shape and RAM (radar absorbent material) will optimally absorb and reflect off certain frequencies. So they HAVE to be designed against optimal frequency radars- since the one country that could destroy us was the USSR, it made sense to design them to defeat USSR systems. And given the fact that Russian SAMs are still a huge threat (especially the S-300), we will probably continue to design with them in mind.

That having been said, even if one were using multifreq radars the fact remains that these shapes will make the stealth planes low-observable and thus darn hard to hit.

There is no such thing as infrared radar (used to be IR homing beams but that is a different beastie). There are IR sensors and IR targetting systems (which is probably what you meant), and defenses against that is built into the planes (note the exhausts are generally on top of the plane and the planes fly subsonic thus no afterburner to light up the sky).

There were those who claimed during the Gulf War that the F117s could be spotted by French radar. Turns out they were spotted when they had their gear down or otherwise made themselves visible for air safety reasons.

Stealth will be an expensive obsolesence, especially when LIDAR goes into wide use. Computing power also makes other opportunities possible as noted in other posts. Also, with enough cheap Mig-25/31s or UAVs airspace can simply be covered by enough eyeballs.

Consider the cost, however of the lost aircrews from 'cheaper' alternatives, or how some campaigns wouldn't happen at all if we were going to lose more of our pilots during aerial attacks (thus yielding more dead Kosovars, for instance), or the ultimate cost of a Soviet Union that did not have to spend itself into oblivion to deal with it's PVO paranoia. This is more like spending on battleships, it will be obsolete but it's done some good in the meantime and the alternative of not having them was unacceptable.

Re:American Maginot Line

[ender81b]

Yes and no. The principles of stealth are extremely complex and hard ot understand for even the experts but I will try to explain it a little here, from what i understand.

Basically you can never make an aircraft 'disappear' off of radar for a number of reasons. Radar works by sending out frequency pulses and then reading the returns . The key is to reduce those returns to nearly nothing by reducing the planes RCS (radar cross section? something like that). You do THAT by doing a large number of simple things. First you make sure that no matter what no flat on angle is presented to the beam, instead you want everything to be angled as to deflect as much as the energy away from the aircraft as possible (think of the f-117A). You also shield the turbine intakes behind multiple radar absorbing screens, wierd angles in the ductwork, etc (believe it or not one of the biggest sources of radar returns are the turbine blades in the engines). You also plaster the thing with radar-absorbing material.

Also, look at the B-2 from head on. Not much there is it? Incredibly small and you won't find a flat, head-on angle anywhere on the aircraft except.. well here is where this gets tricky. Operating at perfection in ideal conditions the B-2 is about as small a radar cross section as a hummingbird or so. Yes, it can still be detected by modern radar and it can instantly become trackable by doing a number of things (the biggest being a nice angle from the top/bottom of the plane where it's RCS is huge). What B-2, and other stealth aircraft pilots, are trained to do is approach the target from the best possible angles maximizing the time you aren't detected. Now, they can also use standoff missles with long ranges (20+km) to avoid the radar and find 'holes' in the radar coverages to launch their weapons from. Not to mention that it is presumed that the target will also be saturated with Jamming and wild weasal missions. The air force ain't stupid and wouldn't send a flight of b-2's into a potentionall hostile target enviroment unless they where fairly sure they would come out on top w/o any losses (1 billion a plane makes you do that =).

Also note that the only things that can detect B-2's/F-117A/Other stealth aircraft are only the most modern of radars. You instantly elimante 90% of the world's anti-aircraft defenses.. and the 10% that HAVE those defenses tend to be our allies. The 'tiny investment' you speak of isn't so tiny.... even the best, most advanced radar systems of western nations (which have the best, most modern radar systems) have an extremely hard time picking up stealth aircraft - and they can't be everywhere at once. Deploying a full-time AA grid is extroadanirly expensive ... so much so that a number of nations (US) don't even bother. And these things can be dealt with other ways - protect your capital with anti-stealth radars eh? Fine. We will send 14 wild weasal sites and take em out.

Finally consider the new F-22 raptor fighter. Extremely stealthy (nearly as much as a B-2) with AMRAAM fire-and-forget missles, supersonic cruise ability... quite simply nothing can touch it - and I mean nothing. They can usually detect, find, and kill a target before that target can even see them (for those of yuo paying attention they can use targeting data downloaded from a AWACS plane to lock/fire the AMRAAM so as to be undetectable).

Oh, for things like infra-red a number of techniques are used including burying the engines inside to fuselage, spreading the exhaust over a larger area, and a number of other features to make them more 'stealthy'.

The Air Force's obsession with stealth is a good thing... and I hope this answers your questions.

Re:American Maginot Line

[mesocyclone]

Not true. The F-117 achieves stealth by causing the radar signal to be reflected away from the originating transmitter. Thus it is susceptible to bistatic radar.

The B-2, OTOH, also uses radar absorbing material to further reduce its radar cross section.

BTW... the problem with lower frequency radars us that they are not as precise. Furthermore the emitters are vulnerable to HARM missiles.

The use of existing transmitters (TV transmitters for example) is sneakier. You don't necessarily know which transmitters to destroy! You have to take them all out.

But then, one can also use the signals from TV satellites. This was first demonstrated at LAX in the late 60s or thereabouts. But they are low power so they require lots of receiving antenna against a low reflectivity aircraft like a B-2.

And then, of course, there are active techniques to hide a stealth aircraft. Jamming the radars is an old and crude one. Deceiving them is also old. Both are no doubt used in a big way today, but with a lot more sophistication. A radar is at a fundamental disadvantage due to the fourth power exponent in the radar range equation. A jammer is only dealing with a 2nd power term (both of these are powers of the distance).

And then there's all the stuff we DON'T know about this stuff. The physics are obvious, but the applications are not and I am sure some clever engineers on both the stealth and the detection side have done things we won't hear about for some time.

Re:Exclusive pictures...

[SirSlud]

Yeah, 5 years ago I started a campaign to get Websters to change the defition of exlusive:

"Exclusive: (adj) Belonging to one entity. Or many more. Or none. Or whatever defition would lead you to purchase this product."

Re:you mean Bush right?

[cygnus]

really? even better! it runs in the family!

Funny, now that you look back on it...

[WndrBr3d]

There is an article here from Popular Science (Nov. 2000) which is about the 'Bird of Prey' aircraft. They article says that the aircraft has a 'switch blade' wing design. Of course, this is all from the hear say and rumors of the time ;-) Still a fun read.

Here is another 'version' of the article with more diagrams and speculation ;-)

mirror

[WhiteChocolate42]

I've set up a mirror of both the projectblack story and the quicktime movie of the plane in flight. http://www.msu.edu/~brownd41/mirror/batplane/index .html

Re:Exclusive pictures...

[dirvish]

They probably got the photos from http://gettyimages.com/

Re:Welcome to our new robot masters!

[Guppy06]

"at least our new robot masters will look cool"

Actually, from the PopSci article (emphasis mine):

"The airplane was made from a small number of carbon fiber composite parts, and--amazingly, in view of its shape--had a simple all-manual flight control system without a computer in sight.

In this day and age, this fact impresses me more than its radar invisibility.

So, this will be the plane we use to fight back against the robot masters. :)

another commercial tie-in

[evacuate_the_bull]

Hmmmm, WB has a new show called "Birds of Prey." Boeing acknowledges existance of their new fighter "bird of prey." WB.com says hope comes in the unlikely form of a trio of beautiful and relentless heroines, so I guess these Dawson's Creek kiddies are going to fly around in these badass jets stopping evil-doers, (just like our military, I'm starting to get the idea)

Who says WB shows are lame! :)

Has anyone seen ?

[Monkelectric]

or heard about a black aircraft with the shape of a violin body? I was into astronomy about 10 years ago and in the wee hours of the morning I was setting up my scope when all of the sudden out of nowhere this black aircraft (looked like an f15 with the body of a violin) flew overhead. I couldn't tell how big it was (no way to get perspective in a black sky). It was completley silent until it was over me and I heard a humming noise.

A few things dont make sense to me though, I thought it was flying low because it *looked* to be quite large, but I hardly heard any sound (meaning it could have been far away), but from my perspective it was traveling very slow meaning it would have to have been far away to keep a minimum airspeed [paralax motion]... so I dont know :)

Re:Has anyone seen ?

[Rolo Tomasi]

Or maybe someone just tossed a violin over your freakin' house.

Re:Has anyone seen ?

[bernz]

The YF-23 had a sorta violin shape from underneath..and 10 years ago? 1992-1993, that'd be about the time it was being tested.

Re:Has anyone seen ?

[Ugmo]

I was living in Virginia near in the Tidewater area-- lots of military bases. I went out my front door for some reason looked up and saw a slowly moving, very large configuration of light colored objects. My mind interpreted it as an array of landing lights on a large V shaped plane. I got scared for a second because it must have been less than 10 feet above my roof, maybe 30 feet above my head and HUGE. It was also completely quiet. I got a fright. It was either a UFO or a huge unpowered military plane was going to crash on my front lawn.

A second later I heard a quiet HONK (just one). Then it was like a switch was thrown in my brain and I saw it was just the white bellies of a bunch of geese coming into a landing in the marshes behind the houses across the street.

Erotic Ferengi encounters

[GuyMannDude]

I've heard more stories about strippers playing with his "lobes" than I care to.

And you call yourself a NERD! No self-respecting geek could get enough Star Trek related erotic stories! Sheesh...

GMD

It's got a cloaking device!

[Anonvmous Coward]

Oh.. wait.. never mind, the page loaded.

UFOs

[GuyMannDude]

Last time I was there they had two B-2 Stealth Bombers parked near the runway. Seeing one of those things from the back, I am convinced they are the cause of 95% of saucer-shaped ufo sightings in the last 20 years.

Actually the cause of 95% of UFO sighthings is that people are fucking idiots.

GMD

F-22? Not quite yet.

[YrWrstNtmr]

the F-22 is what we can deploy and have deployed right now.

Not quite. There are only 6(?) airframes so far. No operational squadron. The initial base has been decided, but they're not there just yet.

Re:Stealthy yes....but fighter?

[Moofie]

"Flying turd"? Let's see you do better with a slide rule, jackass. That plane is a MIRACLE. It totally revolutionized the force calculus of air power, and it's a master of ragged-edge-of-the-envelope engineering.

Show some respect. The Skunk Works turned in a revolutionary, extraordinarily capable, STUPENDOUSLY RISKY airplane on a shoestring budget. We need more engineers like that.

It's not a fighter. Look at the specs

[KFury]

It's easy to look at the matte grey and assume it's a fighter, but a trip to Boeing's press release tells a different story.

The aircraft has an operational ceiling of 20,000 feet, and a cruising speed of 260 knots (mach 0.4). It's weight is 7,400 lbs. that's less than half the weight of an empty F-16 and a sixth that of an F-14. The weight alone doesn't mean it can't be a fighter, but it's no good for any sort of mixed-use, because of its minimal load capacity.

It's also an unlikely choice for surveillance because of its low ceiling. the U-2 was good because anti-aircraft munitions couldn't reach it. The SR-71 was good because they could outrun missiles. This thing, as stealthy as it may be, is a sitting duck as it patrols below its 20,000 foot ceiling, putting along at 280 knots.

No, the point of this aircraft is that it proves new design and fabrication techniques. the prototype was built for $64 million, soup to nuts, and that's a huge deal. Boeing financed the design and production out-of-pocket, and my best guess is that they did it to rpove to the DoD that they could come up with innovative designs, fabricate and test them cheaply and quickly, and maintain a veil of secrecy while they do it.

After losing the F-22/23 battle to Lockheed Martin, Boeing has to rebuild cred with the DoD as more than a missile and satellite maker. My guess is that this is their 'see what we can do' project for the military, since the Skunkworks facilities were't working on much else nowadays.

Re:Coincidence?

[Azar]

Weren't the first stealth aircraft announced just before Gulf War I? There was speculation at the time that we just needed an excuse to test new weapons in real combat.

If you read the article, you'd know they're announcing it because they're retiring it. It was only a prototype , a technology demonstration if you will. We won't be producing these jets.

Bzzzzt. Try again

Yep

[Goonie]

Australia has a super-long-range radar system, the Jindalee over-the-horizon radar, that lets us watch pretty much anything coming in from the north for at least 2000 miles. It can detect stealth aircraft quite well.

I don't the US is too worried about us though, particularly as Lockheed Martin is a joint venture partner in the project...

Commentary: It won't be 'produced'.

[Anonymous Freak]

Okay, for those that haven't paid enough attention (i.e. didn't actually go and read the article,) here is the short of it:

1. This was a Technology Demonstrator . It was not a prototype of any aircraft that will be built.
2. It flies too slow (260 knots), and too low (20,000 ft.) to be of any use whatsoever as a military vehicle.
3. It was fully funded by Boeing. It was a Boeing project, NOT an Air Force project.
4. The entire point of this aircraft was to validate concepts for use on future vehicles.

Now, what this means:

This aircraft was made by Boeing so they could make sure that developmental technologies would work. They did this because they had other contracts with the DoD that would benefit from this technology. As the press release says, technology from this aircraft was used in development of the X-45A.

This is very common for defense companies. They know that they need to work on some piece of technology to get their DoD project working right, but they already told the DoD that they had said technology. So what do they do? They develop the technology in secret (seperately from the DoD project,) do it cheaply, and do it with in-house money. This way, the DoD project gets its technology, and they don't have egg on their face from the fact that they didn't actually have this technology developed in the first place.

Re:KH-11

[Mr.Sharpy]

A little birdie told me this,

current keyhole resolution: ~30cm or 1 inch (!)

Surely you mean 30mm. Or maybe NASA did the metric conversion for this too...