Message posted by Peter Merlin on January 16, 2012 at 7:31:21 PST:
The name AURORA was used for a budget line item to fund infrastructure for supporting construction and test of the Northrop B-2. It was never an aircraft. While there have been a few - very few - intriguing rumors with any reasonably significant provenance suggesting the possibility of a high-speed testbed/demonstrator, there is still no evidence whatsoever to support them. The best we have so far are a few cryptic words from someone (with a bonafide background who worked at the site) describing characteristics of a one-of-a-kind demonstrator. We have a daytime sighting from someone who didn't take any pictures even though they had a camera. We have a nighttime sighting from someone who claims to have taken pictures but wont share them with anyone. I never trust night sightings because they are notoriously unreliable, especially the ones that describe "black triangles." They usually seem to rely on the pattern of visible exterior lights and the dark mass seen between the lights. I have made intensive studies of aircraft in the traffic pattern at various airports (including AF Plant 42) at night. I found that even when I knew what type of aircraft I was observing (a C-130, for example), and it was flying directly overhead at low altitude, with some illumination from the city lights below, it still just looked like a pattern on lights with no distinct shape. The human brain has a tendency to fill in a shape between the lights, which are frequently set in a triangular pattern.
In Reply to: Re: Aurora Spy Plane posted by Chris H. on January 15, 2012 at 11:34:40 PST:
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