CA to Hawaii in 15 mins?

[publius]

I was just listening to C2C, and Noory has some character on who claims to know something about "Aurora" or whatever the purported hypersonic plane is. Says the thing has a dual propulsion system. One slow speed system for take-off and landing, and the hypersonic engine for high speed.

The guy claimed on a test flight coming back in to Groom Lake or Edwards or wherever, they had a problem transitioning back down to the low speed engines, and feared they would loose the aircraft so they directed the pilot to take back out over the ocean so they wouldn't have a crash of an aircraft that didn't exist to clean up.

He said they were able to fix it and it took 15 minutes. By that time, he was over Hawaii.

Now, I ask you, is this kind of speed actually feasible, even liberally extrapolating the limits of current technology that the secret black-projects outfits might have?

-Richard

[Ozzy]

1200 miles an hour would equate to 300 miles in 15 minutes.

How far is it from California to Hawaii?

15 minutes to get there, but 2 hours stuck in airports.

[Tog]

California to Hawaii is 2500 miles as measured on Google Earth. THat would be about 10,000 miles per hour, or about twice the speed of the X-15 if I recall it correctly.

[Van Rijn]

A suborbital rocket is, I think, the only feasible possibility. And, of course, you would have planned to go that route and burned off a lot of fuel to put yourself in a ballistic.

That's on the very high end for scramjets, and black project or not, I would seriously doubt it was doable.

[publius]

Later one, this guy claimed he knew what they infamous "black triangles" are: a stealth blimp, and about 600' x 400' rough base to length.

He said the propulsion system was regular jet engines buried deep inside the aircraft with directed exhaust vents coming out on the top side. They can be moved around to direct thrust. He said it also has an active noise cancellation system that can almost completely mask the sound of the engines.

And if that's not enough, the bottom has an active "star pattern" camoflauge system. The skin has a bunch of little lights and they simulate a star pattern and make it move backwards to craft's velocity to try to make it very hard to see at night from the ground.

He said the top speed is only 500mph or so and this thing is some sort of deep stealth infiltration thing.

What you do you think about that claim?

-Richard

[Forskern]

A stealth airplane with lights all over the fuselage? As I understand, the correct BAUT term is "hogwash".

[Doodler]

Meh, these speculations get more bizarre with the retelling. Whatever black jets are flying, I'm sure we'll be pointing and laughing at the speculators when its said and done.

Not that I don't believe a stealth dirigible could exist, but given the success of the F-19 smokescreen that covered the F-117, I'll chuckle, shake my head, and wait for declassification.

[phunk]

a star pattern on the bottom would only look correct for observers in 1 position, for everone else it would make it stand out more.

[01101001]

a star pattern on the bottom would only look correct for observers in 1 position, for everone else it would make it stand out more.

It probably wouldn't look exactly right to anyone, as described, but would be hard to spot. He said it was a star field, not actual star patterns, not recognizable constellations. I took it to be merely star-like camouflage -- mostly dark gray with a few bright lights scattered about. And it would scroll opposite the direction of travel, so the star camouflage would appear to be stationery.

It might be that the only really visible part would be the edges, where actual stars were vanishing/appearing and fake stars in different locations would be appearing/vanishing. I think that's the best visible camo effect they could accomplish.

[antoniseb]

There are people who like to imagine things like this and say them outloud. People have talked about SCRAMjets maybe being able to get up to Mach 15 some day, which would get you pretty close to the CA-HA distance in fifteen minutes, but we don't have that technology. SCRAMjet tests are currently on the back-burner, but the tests we've done so far have not been indicating that we have this stuff working.

[publius]

a star pattern on the bottom would only look correct for observers in 1 position, for everone else it would make it stand out more.

That would be true only for some trained astronomer who knew exactly what the proper star pattern should be at a particular location. The idea would be to mask a big black spot in the sky with something that looks halfway normal. Out of the corner of your eye, not paying too close attention, something like this would be just the ticket.

The idea behind such a thing (if anything like it is actually being developed, of course) would be something silent and invisible to almost float into enemy territory, take close up pictures, maybe drop bombs, or even insert and pick up special forces teams or something. You have something flying/floating at low altitude, low speed. Now, an observer on the ground at night nearby underneath would see a moving black spot in the sky. That would stick out.

The idea of the moving star field would be to mask that moving black spot so the eye wouldn't pick it up easily. Now, that would be for just some reasonable looking moving bright dot pattern that blends in with the actual sky surrounding it. You can imagine something far more sophisticated. Say the bottom of this stealth blimp craft is a giant LCD screen of sorts. Cameras on top take a picture of the sky above and then display that on the giant screen below. If that giant LCD had enough power to be bright enough, you could imagine something like working even in broad daylight. Take a picture of the sky above, then display it on the bottom as you move along.

-Richard

[publius]

There are people who like to imagine things like this and say them outloud. People have talked about SCRAMjets maybe being able to get up to Mach 15 some day, which would get you pretty close to the CA-HA distance in fifteen minutes, but we don't have that technology. SCRAMjet tests are currently on the back-burner, but the tests we've done so far have not been indicating that we have this stuff working.

But if you were working on something like that and wanted to keep it secret, wouldn't that be exactly what you wanted the public to think? Say, oh it might be possible some day in the future, but devlelopment is on the backburner and the technology doesn't exist. And in reality, you're working on that technology as fast as you can?

-Richard

[Nicolas]

THat would be about 10,000 miles per hour

Mach 15. For current scramjets, IMO totally unrealistic to be attainable in a lifesize aircraft. M10 would be the maximum I would give any credibility at all. M15 is hardly given any attention even at theoretical level at this moment.

Unless it works with brute and simple rocket propulsion, I say rubbish.

[Larry Jacks]

If you look at where the military is spending so much money on R&D, you'll find that super-fast planes aren't it. The biggest areas for surveillance and reconnaissance are in long duration unmanned aircraft like Global Hawk. Aviation Week & Space Technology has also reported on a "Son of Darkstar" stealthy UAV. The operative word in surveillance and reconnaissance is "persistence", the ability to loiter over an area for long periods to observe what is going on. That's just the opposite of what you'd get with a super-fast "Aurora" aircraft. Which has better military utility - a platform that can loiter over an area for hours (24 hours for Global Hawk) and broadcast the data via satellite or something that blazes over at the speed of heat and can only take a few seconds of observations?

A coworker of mine was an SR-71 RSO for 5 years. As much as he and I love super planes like the Blackbird, it just doesn't offer a lot of military utility any more, especially for the price.

[publius]

I was looking some more at this guy's claims of what this Mach15 Aurora thing might be. He's says it not a scramjet, but a "linear aerospike", whatever that actually is. He says it may have a third pure rocket (not air breathing) engine and is suborbital capable.

The primary idea behind this thing, he says, is not intelligence gathering, but a vehicle to get nuclear MIRVs from point A here in the US to a point B anywhere on the globe with lightning speed. That would be useful for taking out any ICBMs during the launch phase.

So say in the future North Korean has some nuclear tipped missle and it looks like they're going to launch it. It would be great to be able to wait until you're absolutely sure they're going to actually launch it before doing a nuclear strike of your own. With such a Mach 15 baby, you could do that. Get that sucker over the target, and only pull the trigger if they do indeed launch the thing.

So while I certainly agree something this fast is far-fetched, I do believe that speed is still very useful, and something the military would still want very much.

-Richard

[Swift]

NASA web page about the linear aerospike for the X-33

[Nicolas]

I don't know how fast linear aerospikes can propell a craft; I was speaking of scramjets only.

[Van Rijn]

The advantage of an aerospike engine is that it gives you higher efficiency at different altitudes than a conventional rocket engine. That's why it was proposed for the SSTO X-33. I could imagine a suborbital rocket with aerospike rocket engines and possibly secondary jet engines for low speed flight, though you would get only one long ballistic "hop" out of it, and the engineering would be nasty.

[Jigsaw]

But, see, you guys who are saying, "We don't have the technology to fly a plane at Mach 15" are ignoring one very, very important thing--it's secret technology. Of course. Of course you don't think we have the technology--that's just what They want you to think.



[goes away adjusting tinfoil hat]

[cjl]

I don't know how fast linear aerospikes can propell a craft; I was speaking of scramjets only.

Aerospikes in and of themselves are not an engine. They are just a nozzle technology, and used almost exclusively on pure rockets. They allow for a near-ideal expansion ratio at all altitudes, giving goof performance at a wider range of altiudes than the standard bell shaped nozzles. However, this also would imply it isn't a jet at all, but a rocket, at which point it loses any semblance of resemblance to an airplane...

One thing is true though - since a linear aerospike is a rocket nozzle, it could propel something to mach 15, as rockets do all the time...

It would be horribly inefficient in the process though, so wouldn't be the choice for this. No matter how good you can get a rocket, a jet will always be far better because of the simple fact that it doesn't have to carry an oxidizer.

[danscope]

Hi, Regardless of what you employ for an motive force; how does one keep from
burning up in the process ? Take a good look at the X- 15 and the experimental ablative surface which they experimented with. Kind of a hot potato, you might say!!! Dan

[EricNau]

I read about the Aurora aircraft in Dan Brown's, Deception Point. The Book gives a description... capable of Mach 6 flight, Pulse Detonation Wave Engine propulsion system (powered by misted Hydrogen), a misted-methane propulsion system, 110 ft. long by 60 ft. wide.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, in the book, the airplane left a telltale pulse contrail, and because of that, it flew only at night.


Some of this information correspods to wikipedia's article on the Aurora Aircraft.

[publius]

How about some "air assisted" rocket, some hybrid in between what we call a "jet" and a "rocket" that uses a linear aerospike nozzle? Suck in all the oxygen we can from the ambient air ramming into us, and augment with on-board oxidizer when necessary.

Oh, another thing this character said was this aerospike engine thing was responsible for the "doughnuts on a rope" contrail pattern that some have seen. But his twist is the thing only makes this during the transition from low speed engine to high speed. Something about that transient period does this until the thing gains enough additional speed.

-Richard

[cjl]

Now THAT is bogus.

What's even funnier about it is that a linear aerospike has no possible way to make a "donuts on a rope" shaped trail - the exhaust exit is actually rectangular. Sounds like the "linear aerospike" bit is something he is using without having a clue what it means.

[publius]

Now THAT is bogus.

What's even funnier about it is that a linear aerospike has no possible way to make a "donuts on a rope" shaped trail - the exhaust exit is actually rectangular. Sounds like the "linear aerospike" bit is something he is using without having a clue what it means.

Take a little copper tube and a pair a pliers and make yourself a little rectangular nozzle, say a little slit shaped thing. Now, blow out little puffs of smoke out of that. Do the little smoke puffs remain in a rectangular shape, with perfect little corners? They become little balls, don't they?

-Richard

[publius]

Here's one resulting from a "donut on a rope contrail" search:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...rcraft/pde.htm

This is the pulse wave detonation concept. But note one could call the rear of this a "linear aerospike", because it behaves exactly like that. And note they mention using a fuel-oxidizer mixture in addition to just spraying pure fuel. That would be the air assisted thing -- use some oxygen from the air and add extra oxidizer.

-Richard

[cjl]

Take a little copper tube and a pair a pliers and make yourself a little rectangular nozzle, say a little slit shaped thing. Now, blow out little puffs of smoke out of that. Do the little smoke puffs remain in a rectangular shape, with perfect little corners? They become little balls, don't they?

-Richard

I'm not saying they remain rectangular, but considering the shape of a linear aerospike, getting a "donut" shape is practically impossible. It would become rounded, no doubt, but not that rounded...

Also, from the linked page, I don't think that would act as a linear aerospike. I can't tell exactly what that is trying to illustrate, but it does not appear to be an aerospike to me (which is a rather specific type of nozzle).

[Tog]

Later one, this guy claimed he knew what they infamous "black triangles" are: a stealth blimp, and about 600' x 400' rough base to length.

He said the propulsion system was regular jet engines buried deep inside the aircraft with directed exhaust vents coming out on the top side. They can be moved around to direct thrust. He said it also has an active noise cancellation system that can almost completely mask the sound of the engines.

And if that's not enough, the bottom has an active "star pattern" camoflauge system. The skin has a bunch of little lights and they simulate a star pattern and make it move backwards to craft's velocity to try to make it very hard to see at night from the ground.

He said the top speed is only 500mph or so and this thing is some sort of deep stealth infiltration thing.

What you do you think about that claim?

-Richard

It was the cover story for Popular Science or Popular Mechaics about 5 years ago give or take a couple years. The pcture was of large delta wing blimp with an active lcd screen on the bottom and cameras on the top. The effect was to take the images of th stars and project them on the screen underneath.

But then, back in the mid 80s they had cover stories about jet liners that had 4 wings. Two like a conventional plane and two that replaced the horizontal stabilizers, swept forward and met the first pair at the ends. This gave the wins a diamond shape when viewed from the front or top. I have yet to see that design anywhere else.

As for the pulse engines. There was an aricraft being tested, in daylight, near Barstow, California that would fly along with an F-15. It would then accelerate very quickly, climbing as it did this. It would quicly outrun the F-15. When it did this acceleration, it would leave three puffs of smoke or something hanging in the air behind it. This was visible to the construction crews working on the freeway at the time, so it would seem not to be a huge secret. Source on this is my dad, who was on said construction crew and watched this happen several times a day over about a dozen days total. He never mentioned a sonic boom though.

[Nicolas]

But then, back in the mid 80s they had cover stories about jet liners that had 4 wings. Two like a conventional plane and two that replaced the horizontal stabilizers, swept forward and met the first pair at the ends. This gave the wins a diamond shape when viewed from the front or top. I have yet to see that design anywhere else.

That design is still around in the 2000's. Not applied yet though.

[publius]

Tog,

Hmmpphh. That's interesting. So the stealth blimp with the active camoflauge has been speculated about for that long.

You know, something like this would explain something. One of the arguments about these black triangle and other UFO sightings over populated areas has always been why would the military expose some top secret aircraft to a massive number of people. Do the testing over isolated areas.

But I always suspected there might be a good reason why you might want to test something over a large population. And this would be one of those. Determine how good your stealth and active camofluage actually is.

Fly the thing over some city, monitor the local authority's communications and see if people start calling about strange things in the sky. That would be an excellent way to test how good your camoflauge was. And even take if further. Turn off your camo and stealth, even turn on some lights so people will obviously see it. Fly over in some flamboyant way and get everyone excited and looking. Then, turn on your camo system, fly over again, and see if it's good enough to fool a bunch of people *actively looking* for it.

And then when it's over, you stir up the usual alien/UFO suspects to jump all over it and dismiss it all as some kook fantasy. It would be beautiful.

-Richard