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Two-Stage-to-Orbit Spaceplane Program Shelved
MadMorf writes "According to this article in Aviation Week, for nearly twenty years the USAF and "a team of aerospace contractors" has designed, built and tested a two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, which could be used for "reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery". Now this highly classified project may have been shelved for budgetary reasons."
It took 20 years.... find that out?
sure it has. ;-) Probably just means it went operational.
So, now the program that "Doesn't exist" doesn't exist any more.
There should be a moderation category "Dumbest Comment EVER"
Slashdot reports this spaceplane being shelved as a certain fact. Even the article can't report it as certain. It's mostly conjecture and hearsay at this point.
When did slashdot turn into the Weekly World News? First it was political conspiracy theories, not this. It's getting ridiculous.
The bad news dept. seems wrong. I think this should be under the nothing to see here really nothing to see here dept.
Did it really get shelved?
[conspiracy theory]
Supposedly we have an uber top secret project has been ongoing for 16 years. We have a group that has been probing into it for the full time. Maybe the group got close and the gov't decided to release info that it has been "shelved". The group redeems itself by posting the information and stops following the secret program. The gov't smiles and continues without watchful eyes.
[/conspiracy theory]
Maybe?
I'll bet that if they have retired this, they've determined that the can do the same with unmanned drones, or a smaller unmanned satelite system that's launched as one piece package.
My money is on the drones, however. Some of the newer models can orbit at close to 100k feet for long periods of time, and are so small hard to spot that they might as well be satellites. Also, if they've been successful enough with hiding the sats that are launched, as in last month's Wired article (discussed here on slashdot) then maybe they don't need as much quick launch capability.
This is a shame. I remember talk of this when I was in aerospace in the late 90s. I am of the opinion that most of the progress to be made on this type of thing is going to be done in the private sector and therefore the technology will be available to our enemies as well.
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be particular about who it makes friends with.
I *want* to believe, but I doubt seriously if we have achieved this just yet. It would take a major breakthrough in fuel technology and/or hypersonic flight to make it from 100,000 ft. to 300 miles, even starting at mach 3. A craft the size of this hypothetical spaceplane would need a huge amount of fuel for that, not to mention heavy heat shielding a la the STS. I'm betting the NRO has found much cheaper methods of quietly getting satellites into unannounced orbits.
The USAF DynaSoar concept was considered and canned by 1963. So what else is new?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
could it be that it was "cut" intentinally for exactly that headline
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Can we not, as a species, keep at least one place free of war and hostility? I know, that is probably a really tall order, but come on, human-kind! Grow up already!
BTW, I am by no means a luddite. I'm all about the space program and getting the human race a means to get off this planet. However, can we not leave these stupid, childish toys (i.e. weapons of war) behind while we do so? The cynic in me doubts this is possible, but I really want to believe so.
It seems infinitely sad to me that the primary motivation for most technological advance in the world is to come up with a better means of killing others.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Some time ago when the USAF wanted a stealth aircraft, the request for one was made semi-public.
It was featured in aviation week, and funding was displayed in the budget too.
There was no need to hide it according the the airforce, as nobody knew if such an aircraft could be made.
But after the skunkworks built and flew the Have blue prototype, the entire project turned black overnight.
All information about it disappeared, from the requests to the budgets. That convinced everyone that the project was real, and started off the "F-19" debate.
We might be seeing the same thing now.
I do not believe that it is built on a stock XB-70 though.
As far as the other aspects of this for USAF purposes, ie, recon, they have been superceded by other technologies that have emerged and evolved since its development. The fact some military leaders didn't know about a private contractor's R&D efforts on failed technology doesn't mean there's a conspiracy you need to call Mulder and Scully about.
Personally I would suspect rockets will be the economical launch vehicle of choice (as uneconomical as they are) for quite some time, and that unmanned drones and improvement in satellite imaging will give us that military eye in the sky. I'm more in favor of seeing how to reduce the cost of rockets and getting more communication infrastructure in place for everyone to use, than spending our resources hunting down and killing our fellow man, but I'm more of a dork than a military leader.
Anything that is meant for inserting weapons into orbit should be shelved, IMNSHO. Maybe I'm spewing a bunch of "tree-hugging-hippy-crap", but I think it is best to keep weapons out of space.
If a verifiable international treaty were in place to prevent some types of weapons from being deployed I might agree with you. But unilaterally backing away from the weaponisation of space would be suicide for the US. Also, how do you define a space weapon? GPS can be used to guide a bomb through a terrorist's bedroom window. Military communications satellites direct ground forces to do mayhem. Many nations have these. Aren't these weapons? I think so.
Can we not, as a species, keep at least one place free of war and hostility? I know, that is probably a really tall order, but come on, human-kind! Grow up already!
Think of the struggle between nations as natural selection in progress. Someday, when democracy, capitalism, and free trade have spread to all countries a less violent, more ritualized struggle will be carried out through fair economic competition. Until that day armed conflict will be with us.
an ill wind that blows no good
It's the best Propaganda/Misinformation outlet the US military has.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Maybe if they worked under the auspices of the public, such a project would fly.
Wouldn't doubt it if this ball gets picked up by some private company.
Seems like the best method of achieving orbit, imo.
I can foresee that by going on with budget cuts, in the end 100% of the budget will be used to pay just salaries with no project, research or other interesting thing.
Useless projects will make the magics for the rest!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Could you please name a single "drone" with a 100k ft. cruising altitude? Or to be more blunt, did you just make that up? I've researched UAV technology pretty extensively and haven't heard of any that fly that high. NASA/Scaled's Proteus and the RQ-4 Global Hawk have only reached about 65k, while the SR-71. I believe the D-21 could reach 100k from its launch platform (SR-71 at 75k), but that died out in the 1960s.
I don't understand why this could not be a replacement for the soon-to-be-scrapped shuttle program. After reading the article, it seems that this thing was up and running. Why not turn it over to NASA rather than placing it into some hidden hanger to collect dust?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
It's funny how the "Blame America!" crowd decries our nation's attempts at influencing the attitudes and actions of other countries, yet somehow believes that the world will follow our lead if we declare space off limits to military weapons. Or worse, believes that we should deliberately weaken ourselves while we watch our enemies grow stronger.
Do you really think the Chinese don't want space-based weapons? Do you think that North Korea wouldn't deploy space-based weapons, were they to obtain the technology to do so? Don't you think that Iran would assert its right to place weapons in orbit?
War was not invented by Americans. Nor will it end when we are gone. It is a simple fact of our human condition. It has been throughout our history, it is in our present, and will be in our future.
Personally, I think America ought to have space-based weapons, sooner and in greater numbers than any other nation. Because I can't think of a better country to have the upper hand in influencing world affairs.
A friend of mine is working on the engines for a single stage to orbit vehicle. It's an interesting project although a long way from becoming operational.
Can we declassify it and learn from it? I'm sure NASA and future X-Prize competitors could learn a lot of the successes (or failures, as it looks like) of this project.
Of course they can't give it to NASA! It was designed to blow shit up, not fly people into space. (Didn't RTFA) Besides, I'm sure that the military and NASA have totally incompatible strategies for wasting taxpayer money.
AFAIR, that British project handled the fuel requirements by switching from air-breathing to internal oxygen once it got high enough. It had a revolutionary motor that could use both.
Perhaps they sold it to Lockheed?
>It seems infinitely sad to me that the primary motivation
>for most technological advance in the world is to come up
>with a better means of killing others.
I'm sure I'll burn some karma on this, but I would beg to differ.
There is an interesting premise to Larry Niven's sci fi writing about the Kzin war - the Kzin telepaths reported to their masters that the humans had no military weaponry, and were sure to be an easy conquest. Yet when they first attacked, humanity threw them back in short order, because the civilian technology we DID have was so powerful it cut thru their military systems like butter.
http://www.larryniven.org/kzin/empire.htm
Hmmm.
I see things a little differently, however. I work for the US military as a civilian, directly involved in the procurement of weapons of war. Anyone in our organization will immediately tell you that the goal is not to wage war, but to avoid it. Ronald Reagan knew this when he emphasized his "peace thru superior firepower" mantra. If we allow ourselves to become weaker than our foes, we will find war waged upon us, simply because it's possible. Granted, the only way to stay ahead is to work hard at it, and stay atop the technological king-of-the-hill game. To many (and apparently to this person) it looks as if we want the weapons so we can use them - but I assure you that the vast majority of soldiers, airmen and marines in this country want nothing to do with going to war. I have great respect for the armed services in America, because they are willing to put themselves in death's way to free others. But nobody that I've ever talked with had any interest in conquering another county for the sake of expanding our territory, or taking something that was not already ours.
In the end, I find it fortunate that our military research ends up providing such dramatic benefits for the civilian world.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
In recent years, Aviation Week has become somewhat more conservative about its coverage -- it's a little disappointing in some ways, as now they are often the last place to publish something -- but they are very rarely mistaken about a scoop like this.
They often publish photographs of planes, too, and leave the interpretation up to the reader. For example, they published the first photos of Rutan's White Knight, the carrier for SpaceshipOne. The White Knight/SpaceshipOne system flies a profile very similar to the one described by this current article, although with much lower performance.
Anyway, AvWeek published the White Knight photos with no description of the plane's mission, but any informed reader would immediately recognize it as a spaceplane first stage. Once Rutan announced the program, they covered it completely, but until they knew for sure they didn't say anything. For them to describe this Blackstar system in this explicit detail, I am certain that all their ducks are in a row -- and barcoded.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Back in the day when AvWeek was fat with cold war coverage, that was their nickname - good to see that they're back! Boeing, Airbus, RJs & the airline bankruptcy du jour was getting a little boring.
How arrogant, to think that 'democracy' and 'capitalism' (american style of course) once adopted by those savage backward countries
'American style' is your embellishment, not my words. The need for democracy and capitalism is not so much derived form hubris as practical observation. What else to you suggest? Islamic faciscm? Stalinism? Maoist dictatorship?
an ill wind that blows no good
Looks like a copy of the Soviet Spiral spyplane to me.
There's some pretty good coverage of the supposed Blackstar spaceplane over on Clark Lindsey's RLV News. According to the latest post, the existence of the project as previously described is looking rather dubious. Here's what Lindsey wrote:
Despite the many details provided by AvWeek about the purported Blackstar program, the existence of an "operational" TSTO reusable system seems wildly inconsistent with what has been happening with all the rest of the government space programs since the early 1990s and with what they have planned for the next couple of decades.
- As a reader already commented, NASA's whole approach to space transport is based on the claim that fully reusable space vehicles are not feasible with current technologies.
- DARPA has had programs like Falcon and RASCAL (canceled due to cost overruns) that are intended to provide "responsive space" capability. For the next 5-10 years, this simply means launching microsats on short notice. Why not just use Blackstar or build on its capabilities?
- Why would a system like the Blackstar be "shelved" when it is so far beyond what anyone else is flying and beyond what the rest of the government claims is even feasible?
- The magazine article speculates that the program was run directly or indirectly by an intelligence agency and they managed to kept it secret from even "top military space commanders". So how did they manage to fly this thing to orbit and not have it show up on the military's space tracking system?
- In a government where secrets seem to stay secret only until more than one person knows about them, I find it extremely hard to believe a huge program like this could be kept under wraps for over 10 years. And not just from the public but from most of the military and NASA.
If it was the beginning of April, I would take this whole thing to be a big leg-puller.
If we were still in the 1980s, I would assume AvWeek had been led astray by a disinformation campaign aimed at the Soviets. But the Soviets are gone so I'm not sure why anyone in the Pentagon or the Intelligence agencies would bother to run an elaborate spaceplane ruse other than perhaps to get back at AvWeek for breaking so many stories about secret programs over the past several decades...
A design study program and some prototype tests, maybe, but a secret operational orbital system borders on sci-fi. I like sci-fi and I hope this story is true but I'll wait for independent confirmation before I'll buy it.
No kidding, look!
7 3cen042.html
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/rockets/nostalgia/
http://www.dars.org/jimz/estes/k-42i.tif
Coincidentally, this news about the USAF's secret vehicle comes out on the same day as news that SpaceX has spent some of their money during the past few years secretly developing the first private manned orbital spacecraft. There's coverage on both SpaceRef and Space.com. The capsule will be reusable and is targetted at NASA's recently-announced COTS program for commercial deliveries of crew and cargo to the International Space Station. It's also likely that they'll be using the capsule to compete for Bigelow Aerospace's prize for a privately-built manned vehicle capable of docking with their private space station modules.
A quote from the Space.com article:
Musk said he thinks Dragon can be ready to enter service in 2009 - a full year before the shuttle is expected to conduct its last flight.
"I feel very confident about being able to offer NASA an ISS-servicing capability by 2009 and am prepared to back that up with my own funding," Musk said.
Dragon's initial test flights would be conducted from SpaceX's island launch facility in the Kwajalein Atoll, Musk said, with operational flights to be conducted from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Musk said SpaceX proposed several different configurations of Dragon in order to meet NASA's needs to deliver both pressurized and unpressurized cargo loads to the station and bring some materials back. He also proposed a crewed version capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to and from the station.
From the SpaceRef article:
Visitors to SpaceX's El Segundo facility over the past several years have noticed an area which is roped off - one they cannot get close to - with some large hardware covered up. Underneath those covers are a variety of Dragon protoypes and developmental items produced over the past several years.
Initial designs for Dragon were somewhat similar to a blunt nose version of the DC-X - complete with landing legs. Driven by additional thinking - and the emerging demands of a cargo and human transport business for the ISS - the design of Dragon has been modified and the crew capsule portion of the spacecraft now sports a more conventional blunt conical, capsule-like design with a 15-degree slope angle.
Brilliant Buzzard finally goes white.
Amazing.
Think of the technology here that could have been
applied to other things such as retiring the space
shuttle, etc.
Scaled up, this could have been quite interesting.
There were reports of this thing flying all over.
See Dan Zinngrabe's old Black Dawn black aircraft
site for information.
This is the first I've heard that the aircraft dropped
from the belly of the aircraft - most of the reports
had it that the orbiter took off from the back of the
larger bird.
For those who wanted information on this thing, see:
w n.spml
http://members.macconnect.com/users/q/quellish/da
It's old information but still interesting many
have seen this thing.
The two VTOL Stealth aircraft I spotted in
outstate Minnesota back in 1989 haven't come
into the white world yet - some of these
things languish in classified museums.
I really don't think that this was uber-top-secret, and some group was pursuing this full time, and got close.
That, considering that for the 1987 Bourget Airshow, NASA contracted with Va Tech to have built an 80' model of the NASP (National Air/Space Plane). People walked under it as they entered the US Pavillion, and a bunch of students stood under it, explaining in extremely broken French (or English, as possible) what the display was all about.
I know, I was there. The labor in building the thing, plus $300+$200 personal purchase money, for a 1-week trip to France was a pretty good deal.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
It's not at all an unreasonable claim either. The usaf has been researching skip bombers and other space planes since the early 60's. I would be disappointed with the feds if they didn't do at least some research in the area. They then shelved it because the military could get the real work of the system done in other, less-expensive ways. It's a damn nuisance that a B-2 has to fly for hours, refuel a few times just to get from the midwest to the midle-east, drop some bombs and then go home. However, it's probably cheaper than the rest of the work necessary to put this space plane above Basra in 40 minutes.
Having used to work at Wright-Patt (where the USAF Museum is) I wondered about that. One day several years ago while driving into work, I noticed that the XB-70 wasn't in its usual spot in front of the museum anymore. Upon closer inspection, a sign in its place read: "Removed for cleaning." Now we know where it REALLY was; at Groom Lake for flight testing.
We usually hear about projects aimed at the advancement of humanity being shelved for "budgetary" reasons, which means money needed in the military budget of the world's #1 conqueror,
G.W."The Phenomenon" Bush.
But to scrap a project that has military potential for the same reasons? I almost feel heartbroken. What on earth is happening to the world. Someone call you senator or something. Give G.W a ring and tell him our country is doing something reasonable. Stop it.
Maybe the engines are new
And maybe there are more/newer artificial fibres.
Now, if you apply this news, to that one....
Imagine how unimaginable that was in those days. And extrapolate to todays percieved reality.
Lots of complaints in this thread about this article. Calling Slashdot the Weekly World News ect. Yet in the "Games: Gold Buying - Time Saver or Cheating?", people are taking it as seriously as possible. And let's not forget the "George Lucas Predicts Death of Big Budget Movies". Honestly... this is probably the best news story of the day. Sad.
The Ruskies launched the really big parts of the Space Station.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The likely reason is the Air Force's multiple billion dollar budget shortfall. Blame that on El Presidente.
There's talk of cutting many classified programs due to money. All that jet fuel for the war effort and that ordnance are expensive. I have heard confirmation that government contractors will be cut from several bases; civilians and military are getting RIF'ed too.
"In recent years, Aviation Week has become somewhat more conservative about its coverage -- it's a little disappointing in some ways, as now they are often the last place to publish something -- but they are very rarely mistaken about a scoop like this." "For them to describe this Blackstar system in this explicit detail, I am certain that all their ducks are in a row -- and barcoded." Actually, that is not true. The author of this Aviation Week article, Scott Wilson, has previously published articles claiming that the USAF had a triangular shaped hypersonic nuclear bomber capable of dropping over 100 nuclear warheads, and that the USAF had a triangular shaped stealth reconnaissance aircraft called the TR-3 Manta. Both of those stories were wrong. Both dated from the early 1990s. Aviation Week never printed a retraction of those stories. In other words, they are _not_ conservative about this. They speculate wildly just like Popular Science does. And they get stuff wrong.
If we had a vehicle that was capable of imaging at incredible resolutions, reaching low Earth orbit... ...and maybe funded by money intended for NASA... ...yet didn't use it to save American lives?
or did we?
"Hey, take a look at this picture. Your wing is f---ed."
or the astronauts and their families are living in hiding on some secret base.
I don't doubt for a moment that AW&ST can and does get stuff wrong, but their credibility is a lot better than yours. So why would I take your word over theirs?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
D Day One??? As in Duane Allen Day by any chance? (Apologies if I messed up the spelling.)
Nobody whose opinion matters will see it here.
if you didn't end up giving the weaponry to lunatic politicians with a Hollywood view of diplomacy who then invade countries which pose to threat to America for internal political reasons.
This is resulting in huge numbers of innocent deaths, and a confirmed reputation for America as a murderous world dictator and bully.
You are not working in a world where there are credible foes. You are making them up to keep your military-industrial complex going. That makes you part of the problem, not pasrt of the solution.
All that jet fuel for the war effort and that ordnance are expensive. I have heard confirmation that government contractors will be cut from several bases; civilians and military are getting RIF'ed too.
My guess would be that at this point, three years into the game, most of the $300B? $400B? however much we have spent [and are spending] on Iraq is going to schools, hospitals, the power grid, water treatment plants, sewage treatment facilities, etc etc etc.
Most of what the DOD is paying on traditional stuff - e.g. salaries and spare parts purchases - would still be going on even if all the soldiers were back home twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do on a US base.
Again, my guess would be that the percentage of the total that is specifically combat-related [e.g. combat pay, surgery costs, ammunition replacement for weapons fired in combat - as opposed to weapons fired in training exercises - etc etc etc] is a vanishingly small percentage of the total Iraqi bill.
Our problem is not that the WAR is expensive [the WAR having lasted all of about three weeks in the spring of 2003]: Our problem is that the post-war NATION BUILDING is just fantastically expensive.
But Dubyah has bet his presidency on a dream of introducing civilization to the Muslim world, and history will be the judge of whether he bet correctly.
Actually, fuel is one of the big costs. The next is food and water. After that it's salaries and small arms ammunition. The nation-building stuff comes from a separate budget item that is approved by Congress. There will be some retirements out of the Air Force inventory in the near future due to budget reasons.
Do you have any links to - ah - how could I say it, more or less non-partisan studies of how the money is being spent?
I'm not talking the raving lunatic KOS/Moveon nonsense, but a serious, bean-counterish comparison of how the money is being spent now vis-a-vis how it might have been spent in a more traditional peacetime era? [Granted, this is not a particularly traditional time...]
E.g. you mention "fuel": Are you saying that the amount of money spent on fuel for Humvees in Iraq is something significant? Or that jet fuel for aerial reconnaissance is significantly greater than it would be in "peacetime"?
Or "food and water": Are you saying that the difference here is that soldiers purchase their own "food and water" in peacetime but have it provided for free in combat zones?
Look, even if you assume the DOD is providing 100% of each soldier's rations for free every day, and you assume 125,000 soldiers, and $10/day for the rations, you only get:
Even if you double that twice, to 250,000 soldiers and $20/day, you only get to From the point of view of the DOD and the Congress, that doesn't even qualify as chump change.No. I can't provide a link to the numbers for two reasons: first, my source is one that I can't release, and the second is that the DoD hasn't had a good track record with their accounting of the "nation building" stuff in Iraq... I know for a fact that many classified things are getting cut due precisely to the war effort. And I know for a fact that the Air Force has been scrambling to figure out how to come out okay with a several-billion dollar shortfall. (I think it's 6 billion, but I'm not exactly sure.)
Well, if you can think of anything "on the record", please keep me updated.
Thanks, and good luck!
If the orbiter is able to use any atmospheric oxygen in its combustion, then the Isp goes up considerably, since you don't need to count atmospheric oxygen burned in combustion as propellant mass, while still getting its benefits. Ramjets get between 1000-3000 sec Isp with kerosene, and 5000-7000 sec with LH2, with scramjets getting a little less at their higher velocity ranges. Boron slurried in kerosene boosts ramjet Isp by 50-100%. Pulse detonation engines, which are long rumored components of this system, operate from mach 0-3 at Isp 10-50% higher than ramjets, though thrust-to-weight ratios are generally considered rather poor. Also, if the orbiter used a duct around its rocket engine, making it a 'ram-ejector', this would offer some ramjet combustion as well as improve the thrust and Isp of the rocket itself.
Another trick to minimizing structural mass fraction requirements is high density fuels, as advocated by Dr. Bruce Dunn and Capt Mitchel Burnside Clapp (of Blackhorse fame). LH2 has terrible density, about
So there are a lot of options for producing much higher Isps or improving mass fraction, and thus improving payload to orbit.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves