Message posted by Chris McDowell on October 02, 2006 at 14:11:48 PST:
The key word in Brown's introductory statement you quoted is "technologies." I'm quite sure the technology exists for the US to build a hypersonic aircraft using a PDW engine. The question is, what significant advantage would that give over our existing platforms, and (here's the important part) is such an advantage great enough to justify the extreme expense that would be required to operate the platform? Even though the Pentagon has a vast "black" budget, it isn't limitless in its resources. At some eventual point, money going into one project means less money going into another. It's only my conjectural opinion, but I think the Air Force looked into Aurora, or some similar project, evaluated it, possibly even flew a prototype. But then, for whatever reason, it was decided that it wasn't practical. Chances are, they've moved on to bigger and better things. :)
In Reply to: Auora as written about by Dan Brown. posted by ke6vuj on October 02, 2006 at 7:04:32 PST:
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