GIGANTIC Aviation Week story, Pentagon has been flying 2-stage orbital spaceplane throughout 1990s |
GIGANTIC Aviation Week story, Pentagon has been flying 2-stage orbital spaceplane throughout 1990s |
Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Mar 6 2006, 02:24 AM
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Guests |
It may even have been manned:
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/chan...ws/030606p1.xml My God, what a story -- if it's even partially true. And, judging from this article, they are absolutely certain they have proof (along with proof that the thing, although it works, has recently been mothballed as not cost-effective). It's important to keep in mind, though, that this thing is NOT a workable prototype of the originally planned 2-stage winged Space Shuttle. The second stage -- the spaceplane that actually achieved orbit -- was relatively small and probably very inefficient as a cargo carrier; its advantage lay in allowing the US to get a military reconaissance (or weapons) satellite into orbit surreptitiously, with no advance warning of the launch going to other countries. Even at that, as I say, AW reports that the thing has been recently canned as not worth its (doubtless huge) black-budget expense. |
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May 23 2006, 07:09 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
Black projects don't seem to be having any budget problems...
PENTAGON'S BLACK BUDGET SOARS TO COLD WAR HEIGHTS The Department of Defense budget request for 2007 includes about $30.1 billion in classified or "black" spending, according to a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "In real (inflation-adjusted) terms the $30.1 billion FY 2007 request includes more classified acquisition funding than any other defense budget since FY 1988, near the end of the Cold War, when DoD received $19.7 billion ($29.4 billion in FY 2007 dollars) for these programs," wrote author Steven Kosiak. See "Classified Funding in the FY 2007 Budget Request" (pdf) from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Ar...BlackBudget.pdf The study was reported in "Classified military spending reaches highest level since Cold War" by Drew Brown, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, May 19: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/14623031.htm -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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