Aurora - a Famous Speculative Project

Ninja said:
I'm surprised to see no patch for any hypersonic air force plane/program pop up on ebay, considering other weird and obscure patches have washed up there :p
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martinbayer said:
I'm not.
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Byeman said:
There has to be a program first.
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That's kinda the point, guys. No hypersonic USAF program, not patches to flog on evilBay.

Ergo, because there have been no patches etc flogged on eBay, there hasn't been a USAF hypersonic program.
 
So, from what I've seen these are the CLOSEST things to Aurora: ISINGLASS, INCAAPS Mach 5 Strike Aircraft, Lockheed ADP/NASA Langley 1990 Mach 4-5 methane fueled studies, Advanced Aerospace Vehicle (AAV), and the X-15. If I missed any other obscure hypersonic concept, I'll be happy to learn more.
 
Ninja said:
So, from what I've seen these are the CLOSEST things to Aurora: ISINGLASS, INCAAPS Mach 5 Strike Aircraft, Lockheed ADP/NASA Langley 1990 Mach 4-5 methane fueled studies, Advanced Aerospace Vehicle (AAV), and the X-15. If I missed any other obscure hypersonic concept, I'll be happy to learn more.
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The closest thing to an actual Aurora (that you don't mentioned) is the Lockheed-Martin X-24C NHFRF of the late 70's.

 
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Ninja said:
So, from what I've seen these are the CLOSEST things to Aurora: ISINGLASS, INCAAPS Mach 5 Strike Aircraft, Lockheed ADP/NASA Langley 1990 Mach 4-5 methane fueled studies, Advanced Aerospace Vehicle (AAV), and the X-15. If I missed any other obscure hypersonic concept, I'll be happy to learn more.
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In 1986, Sandia National laboratories and NASA explored a hypersonic transatmospheric vehicle concept based on the Sandia Winged Energetic Reentry Vehicle (SWERVE). With a slender cone-shaped body and small triangular fins that provided steering, the SWERVE was capable of maneuvering in the range from Mach 2 to Mach 14. Based on the SWERVE shape, the Sandia/NASA configuration (called Avocet) retained the slender conical fuselage but featured the addition of deployable narrow-span delta wings.

The Avocet shape was optimized for hypersonic performance, but for a transatmospheric vehicle to be practical, it had to be capable of subsonic operation during the approach and landing phases of flight. To study these flight characteristics, NASA performed a series of tests at the Randsburg Wash test range at China Lake Naval Weapons Center in 1986, using a 9-foot-long remotely piloted model that weighed about 85 pounds. For flight tests, the Avocet vehicle was dropped from a Piper PA-18 Super Cub. Results indicated the Avocet configuration had an extremely low (probably unacceptable) lift-to-drag ratio.

In 1988, Sandia proposed a follow-on project to study the Avocet configuration’s cruise and landing characteristics. Primary objectives included demonstration of powered flight and landing characteristics, determination of the long-range cruise capabilities of a SWERVE-type vehicle, and the use of Avocet flight data to determine the feasibility of maneuvering and landing such a vehicle following a hypersonic flight. The new vehicle, called Avocet II, was a lightweight, radio-controlled model weighing just 20 pounds. Two ducted-fan engines allowed the Avocet II to takeoff and land under its own power. A series of test flights, from November 1989 through February 1991, also took place at Randsburg Wash.
 
So I was doing some digging around the internet to see if I can find any convincing/ real photos that suggest that the Aurora is real. Take a little looksie at what I found. Im pretty convinced that this is a real photo.
 

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quellish said:
www.nasa.gov

NASA's Contributions to Aeronautics, Volume 1 - NASA

Since its creation, NASA has steadily advanced flight within the atmosphere, repeatedly influencing aviation’s evolution by extending the rich legacy of its
www.nasa.gov www.nasa.gov

Might actually be in vol 2, but it’s in there
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It's in Volume 2.

www.nasa.gov

NASA's Contributions to Aeronautics, Volume 2 - NASA

The second volume includes case studies and essays on NACA-NASA research for contributions including wind shear and lightning research, flight operations,
www.nasa.gov www.nasa.gov
 
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Another weird thing is, has anyone ever tried to look up the kc-135 that was refueling the Aurora and Aardvarks? Maybe a flight history or radio convos?
 
Gunfighter72 said:
So I was doing some digging around the internet to see if I can find any convincing/ real photos that suggest that the Aurora is real. Take a little looksie at what I found. Im pretty convinced that this is a real photo.
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It's a real photo...of a fake model
 
Gunfighter72 said:
Another weird thing is, has anyone ever tried to look up the kc-135 that was refueling the Aurora and Aardvarks? Maybe a flight history or radio convos?
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I doubt anyone had any radios or anything good enough onboard an oil-rig to listen to radio chatter. However, throughout the years other weird stuff has been caught on radios relating to classified aircraft.
 
Gunfighter72 said:
So I was doing some digging around the internet to see if I can find any convincing/ real photos that suggest that the Aurora is real. Take a little looksie at what I found. Im pretty convinced that this is a real photo.
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If you would spend several minutes more (like: reverse image search) you would rediscover that these are 20+ years old photos of flying model feeded from RC modelling forum to believers from Rensedotcom
 
CJGibson said:
Aye, we vigorously wave our arms to flag down passing choppers when we want to go home and those flares are actually navigation aids for the pilots.

Chris
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I should have clarified, military grade radios or very high quality radios. Hope the choppers spot you guys!
 
Ninja said:
I should have clarified, military grade radios or very high quality radios. Hope the choppers spot you guys!
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Especially next week.

Most of our radio ops are ex-forces, some with some, shall we say, interesting careers.

Chris
 
Dynoman said:
Article on NKC-135R tanking a classified aircraft around Area 51. The NKC-135R is configured for testing operations.

www.thedrive.com

NKC-135R Tanker From Edwards AFB Flew This Peculiar Track Over Area 51 Last September

Exotic and highly secretive aircraft in flight testing need gas too.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
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I don't really find this to be useful because that unidentified aircraft could be anything. We are talking about the SR-91 Aurora/Darkstar. But I will admit, the article is actually pretty interesting.
 
flateric said:
If you would spend several minutes more (like: reverse image search) you would rediscover that these are 20+ years old photos of flying model feeded from RC modelling forum to believers from Rensedotcom
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sorry im trying to contribute :(
 
Ninja said:
What page? It's a very long file.
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520-524

Also in this paper "Operational and research aspects of a radio-controlled model flight test program"

Operational and research aspects of a radio-controlled model flight test program - NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

The operational and research aspects of a subscale, radio-controlled model flight test program are presented. By using low-cost free-flying models, an approach was developed for obtaining research-quality vehicle performance and aerodynamic information. The advantages and limitations learned by...
ntrs.nasa.gov ntrs.nasa.gov
 

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Ninja said:
My google drive search function wasn't working. Also, I don't see what's wrong with asking for a bit of help.
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Someone already went to the trouble of locating the correct PDF for you. It's not really that difficult to search the PDF for the right page in Adobe Reader.

Asking someone else to do it for you makes you appear to be lazy and entitled, like you can't be bothered to make the slightest effort to acquire the information yourself.
 
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overscan (PaulMM) said:
Someone already went to the trouble of locating the correct PDF for you. It's not really that difficult to search the PDF for the right page in Adobe Reader.

Asking someone else to do it for you makes you appear to be lazy and entitled, like you can't be bothered to make the slightest effort to acquire the information yourself.
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I can assure you im not lazy, but whatever suits you best.
 
In the early 1990s the Air Force commissioned MIT Lincoln Labs to look into the "skyquakes". The Air Force then often cited the report and it's conclusions as evidence that "Aurora" did not exist.
But they never released the report itself. I have tried a number of places and no one has the report. MIT doesn't, various Air Force organizations, etc.

But the report did exist. From one of the people involved in the study:

In the early 1990s, a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) claimed to be able to track supersonic air vehicles by using the array of seismometers deployed throughout southern California. These seismom- eters were placed across the region to monitor seismic activity, but the researcher found that the shock wave generated by a supersonic air vehicle was sufficient to register on surface-mounted, as opposed to underground, seismometers, and that the time history of seismometer signals recorded across the array could be used to infer speed and location (in two dimen- sions). Using these data, the researcher successfully tracked several space shuttles coming in for landing at Edwards Air Force Base while they were passing over the Los Angeles basin at supersonic speeds.

While this bit of work was interesting, though perhaps not of great mil- itary significance, it got much more interesting when this same researcher claimed that he had seismometer data indicating the existence of a here- tofore unacknowledged supersonic aircraft, which he assumed was the legendary Aurora spy plane. Specifically, there were several months of anom- alous seismometer data indicating atmospheric shock waves, all occurring on Thursdays in the early morning. The researcher concluded that the air shocks were consistent with a hypersonic (in excess of Mach 5), high-alti- tude air vehicle.

As usual, such a claim attracted notice, and the request to investigate the validity and potential military utility of this technique rolled downhill until it reached my level. We got our hands on the seismometer data and did our own maximum-likelihood-based analyses. Try as we might, using exactly the same data as the USGS researcher, we always arrived at barely supersonic solutions for all the anomalous cases.
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Finally, we considered the hypothesis that the USGS researcher had sim- ply made a mistake. This conjecture turned out to be exactly the case, and the mistake was a consequence of his making an inappropriate trigonometric approximation that was valid only if whatever was causing the atmospheric shocks was actually hypersonic, such as a reentering space shuttle.

Further investigation showed that the Navy had been conducting testing with F-14s off the coast of California at the same time that these anomalous events occurred, and that the testing involved supersonic flight that came close to land. The sonic booms were the result of some of the pilots trying to decelerate below the sound barrier before going feet dry and not taking into account the fact that sonic booms generated over the water would propagate for some distance over land before dissipating.
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I have a few issues with this.

1. The Navy F-14s were flying on only one of the days the "sky quake" activity was recorded, and it was not at the same time as the "sky quake"
2. This was hardly an unbiased, 3rd party study - the people involved in it were, or would soon be, active with the Air Force Red Team (!). The Red Team is a special access program that is involved in almost all other Air Force special access programs.

I can't say wether the Lincoln Lab conclusions are valid or not, but it does sound like they may have looked at a very small set of data. And that may have been intentional. It sure would be interesting to get a copy of the study!

Notably, other groups have analyzed the seismometer data and come to very different conclusions.

And if you want to hear the F-14 story:
sofrep.com

There I was…I am the Aurora, hear me roar

The story of one naval aviator's midnight sonic boom off the California coast which was blamed on the secret Air Force spy plane, the Aurora.
sofrep.com sofrep.com
 
I think Ben Rich was lying. I don't believe the funding was ATB related, but was for something else Lockheed was ankle deep into, and it wasn't a go fast platform.
 
sublight_ said:
I think Ben Rich was lying. I don't believe the funding was ATB related, but was for something else Lockheed was ankle deep into, and it wasn't a go fast platform.
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The funding was never allocated, only requested.
 
Ninja said:
My google drive search function wasn't working. Also, I don't see what's wrong with asking for a bit of help.
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Non need to overcomplicate things - next time just use a *basic* google search or the resident website search function (located in the upper right hand corner of this page) instead. Tally-ho!
 

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