This is a weird one, a Lockheed saucer....

The photo of the “saucer” appears to have been taken at the Helendale RCS range in the low bay under the pole.

I believe there was a photo published of the same saucer a few years ago when press got a tour of the Skunk Works facility at Palmdale.

More interesting is the flying wing photo. I believe the photo is of an artists rendering of a “RQ-180”, but it resembles QUARTZ.
 
quellish said:
More interesting is the flying wing photo. I believe the photo is of an artists rendering of a “RQ-180”, but it resembles QUARTZ.
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This is Ronnie Olsthoorn art for a famous AWST NG RQ-180 revelation article based on one of dropped NG SensorCraft iterations.
 
flateric said:
quellish said:
More interesting is the flying wing photo. I believe the photo is of an artists rendering of a “RQ-180”, but it resembles QUARTZ.
Click to expand...
This is Ronnie Olsthoorn art for a famous AWST NG RQ-180 revelation article based on one of dropped NG SensorCraft iterations.
Click to expand...

Well at some point in the future I hope to have accurate renderings made of the actual QUARTZ design from accurate 3 views for my “new” project

At any rate the “saucer” is almost definitely a pole calibration model. I am fairly certain it was photographed inside Palmdale in the last several years and posted to Twitter or Facebook while someone was on an X-59 tour or similar. I have not been able to locate that photo though
 
I don't think I've ever seen any Lockheed's ATB proposal depiction up until today, Thank you so much for sharing sublight_!
 
quellish said:
The photo of the “saucer” appears to have been taken at the Helendale RCS range in the low bay under the pole.

I believe there was a photo published of the same saucer a few years ago when press got a tour of the Skunk Works facility at Palmdale.

More interesting is the flying wing photo. I believe the photo is of an artists rendering of a “RQ-180”, but it resembles QUARTZ.
Click to expand...

Maybe the saucer and the artists rendering/quartz are "substitute" photographs for the actual projects that he cannot place on the wall.
 
I find it very strange that a Lockheed engineer has a picture of a Northrop Grumman project on his wall. If I were a betting man I would say that it is because it closely resembles a still classified project he worked on while at Lockheed - but that is of course pure speculation.
 
You must study QUARTZ thread then
 
Q-nimbus said:
I find it very strange that a Lockheed engineer has a picture of a Northrop Grumman project on his wall. If I were a betting man I would say that it is because it closely resembles a still classified project he worked on while at Lockheed - but that is of course pure speculation.
Click to expand...
Or the engineer may have previously worked for Northrop Grumman. There's a lot of movement of engineers among aerospace/defense contractors. When one company loses a big contract to another company, many engineers migrate from the losing company to the big company. During my career in aerospace/defense, I worked at four different companies and four different government laboratories.

There's also a lot of teaming of companies on large projects, so the engineer may have worked on a project for which Northrop was the prime contractor and Lockheed a subcontractor.

This is of course all speculation, but just as plausible as the speculation you were willing to bet on.
 
bcredman said:
Q-nimbus said:
I find it very strange that a Lockheed engineer has a picture of a Northrop Grumman project on his wall. If I were a betting man I would say that it is because it closely resembles a still classified project he worked on while at Lockheed - but that is of course pure speculation.
Click to expand...
Or the engineer may have previously worked for Northrop Grumman. There's a lot of movement of engineers among aerospace/defense contractors. When one company loses a big contract to another company, many engineers migrate from the losing company to the big company. During my career in aerospace/defense, I worked at four different companies and four different government laboratories.

There's also a lot of teaming of companies on large projects, so the engineer may have worked on a project for which Northrop was the prime contractor and Lockheed a subcontractor.

This is of course all speculation, but just as plausible as the speculation you were willing to bet on.
Click to expand...
Very plausible indeed, but I figured the OP knows the engineer in question and if he worked at both companies he would have told us so… but maybe I’m assuming to much.
 
I'm more interested in the ATB drawing. Where's the video from? I'll try to capture and perspective correct the various photos.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
I'm more interested in the ATB drawing. Where's the video from? I'll try to capture and perspective correct the various photos.
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These came from a zillow virtual walk through of a real estate listing in 2020. If somebody wants to figure out which listing this was, I am sure Zillow could pull up the original images. But if anybody can figure out who listed it, I will just ask the owner for a copy of the pics....
 
I've reverse searched the image and found the original in a Reddit post.
The poster is new-to-reddit-20 and seems to be still active as of a week ago, if anyone wants to ask him more details.

This is what he said about the picture further on in the thread:
This photo is from a virtual home tour of couple that worked at LM Skunkworks. Unfortunately As I no longer work at the same organization as one of them, I can't ask directly. I find it funny they left all this stuff on the wall, on a public resource... Let me know your thoughts! The room this was taken from was a treat to view. So much cool history hanging on walls and sitting on shelves.
Click to expand...
 
Q-nimbus said:
bcredman said:
Q-nimbus said:
I find it very strange that a Lockheed engineer has a picture of a Northrop Grumman project on his wall. If I were a betting man I would say that it is because it closely resembles a still classified project he worked on while at Lockheed - but that is of course pure speculation.
Click to expand...
Or the engineer may have previously worked for Northrop Grumman. There's a lot of movement of engineers among aerospace/defense contractors. When one company loses a big contract to another company, many engineers migrate from the losing company to the big company. During my career in aerospace/defense, I worked at four different companies and four different government laboratories.

There's also a lot of teaming of companies on large projects, so the engineer may have worked on a project for which Northrop was the prime contractor and Lockheed a subcontractor.

This is of course all speculation, but just as plausible as the speculation you were willing to bet on.
Click to expand...
Very plausible indeed, but I figured the OP knows the engineer in question and if he worked at both companies he would have told us so… but maybe I’m assuming to much.
Click to expand...
Maybe, but I worked closely with someone at a company, and I did not find out until I retired that we both had worked in the same branch of a government lab, but at different times earlier in our careers. I found this out only because I happened to read a research paper that he co-wrote with the same scientists we both had worked with in that branch. Because of proprietary restrictions and classification restrictions, often the safest default was not discussing one's previous work.
 

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