Message posted by Peter Merlin on December 19, 2007 at 14:59:49 PST:
According to a high-level Pentagon source who is intimately familiar with all past and current U.S. hypersonic programs, the AURORA line item (PE 0101119F) in the 1986 budget was not an aircraft program at all, but merely a funding line for facilities to support development of the B-2 Advanced Technology Bomber. He also said there was no hypersonic SR-71 replacement. The "Aurora" rumors of the late 1980s and early 1990s were apparently the result of creative guesswork and wishful thinking. Two programs to watch now are Blackswift and X-51. While Blackswift offers a platform with extensive capabilities - a global flyer - it has a long way to go, technologically, toward achieving any sort of practical operational system. The X-51 Scramjet Engine Demonstrator/WaveRider project offers more in the short term. Technology from X-51 will eventually have applications for air-breathing access to space, but more readily provides a system that could easily be adapted to hypersonic weapons.
In Reply to: bythe way who believes in aurora posted by rob on December 19, 2007 at 14:29:52 PST:
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