From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V2 #22 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Sunday, 6 December 1992 Volume 02 : Number 022 In this issue: Re: Discovery Re: Aurora (in the news :) WSJ Aurora Article FX-R?? Re: WSJ Aurora Article Mach 8 Spy Plane in _JDW_ next week! Re: Shameless swipe of news articel (yep, Aurora) See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dnadams@nyx.cs.du.edu (Dean Adams) Date: Sat, 5 Dec 92 06:34:31 MST Subject: Re: Discovery wb9omc@ecn.purdue.edu (Duane P Mantick) writes: >I hope nobody objects to me passing this on... Hardly! :-) >According to some poop that I have, The Discovery Channel will >be running a show called "To Space and Back (X20)" as part of their >Frontiers of Flight series. Yep. That has been a pretty decent series BTW. >This will be shown 12/19 from 2100-2200 EST >and again on 12/20 from 0000-0100 EST. Aka 6pm and 9pm Saturday (PST) >Assuming that "X20" is descriptively accurate, we might learn a >bit more about the X20 DynaSoar program (Boeing).... Let's hope so! I'll certainly be watching. An additional program note of interest is another descent Discovery show "SECRET WEAPONS". Friday's episode was called "Hide and Seek", which covered subjects such as *reconnaissance*. They had some good U-2 and SR-71 footage, >including< film of SRs under construction. There was also a great aerial scene of an SR-71B flying with a KC-135Q. I'm not sure if i've seen that particular clip before... Now the good news! You can catch a replay of this episode on SUNDAY (12/6), at 2:00pm (PST). - -dean ------------------------------ From: dnadams@nyx.cs.du.edu (Dean Adams) Date: Sat, 5 Dec 92 06:36:33 MST Subject: Re: Aurora (in the news :) Ian Woodrow writes: >There has been a lot of speculation on this project Aurora aircraft being >flown frequently from RAF Machrihanish in Scotland. Well I live near >Glasgow and MAC is easy enough to get to for me. Hmmm... perhaps an "intelligence gathering" trip is in order? :-) >Can anyone confirm sightings around MAC and tell me how it can take off >and land at the base without being seen by eye witnesses there ? >Does it only fly after the witching hour or what ? More than likely. That is how they were doing it in Nevada for the early years of F-117 flights... >Surely someone must have seen it closer than miles high - MAC doesn't >have a restricted area around the perimeter - anything moving on the >runway can not be missed. Do you have any idea what the USAF presense is like there? Any especially BIG hangers or unusual support equipment/aircraft around? >I wouldn't mind sipping a few beers near MAC and seeing Aurora some time! Heh... yep! I have a feeling we all might get a kick out of that. :-) BTW, I saw the tail end of another "Mystery Quake"/Aurora report on an L.A. TV station Friday night, so I guess there has been some more socal activity. They also showed the "Concorde" drawing from AW&ST... It is certainly nice that we are now getting a "second wave" of new Aurora info hitting the presses. Things are heating up it seems! Veddy interesting. I'm sure we will also be seeing coverage probably in next weeks AW&ST. I hope someone will be able to pass along the JDW article, since I don't have access to that publication at the moment. - -dean ------------------------------ From: "Dave Hastings, OUCS" Date: Sat, 05 Dec 1992 15:52:57 +0000 Subject: WSJ Aurora Article > Hmmm....observed from an oil rig in the North sea, eh? > > Can we say, *RAF Machrihanish*? > > Sure. Knew you could. :-) Sorry... RAF Machrihanish is on the *west* coast of Scotland. According to "Flight International" magazine, this guy observed it from a gas platform in the southern North Sea. I am also an ex-member of the Royal Observer Corps; aircraft identification was one of the skills that members of this organisation kept up-to-date (its primary role was to provide warning of nuclear attack and fallout on the UK). > Duane > "Mr. Speculation" :-) Dave - -- David Hastings | "Imposition of order=escalation of chaos" VAX Systems Programmer | Oxford University Computing Services| "Just when you think you've won the daveh@vax.oxford.ac.uk | rat race, along come faster rats" ------------------------------ From: John Erling Blad Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1992 17:31:19 +0100 Subject: FX-R?? I try ones more.. Has anyone info about FX-R?? a quick and dirty translation: Fighter eXperimental - Reconnaissance. If I'm not corrected I might think this is spelled A U R O R A. Any corrections out there? If the estimated speed is correct, I don't think it is necessary to operate from Scotland. It will fly from USA and refuel i flight. This mean that you should look for the KC135 and where it might come from. This may also imply that the plane stay aloft for relativly long time and therefore is operated by a small crew. But this don't match with the Fighter distinction. Perhaps Im in error. Is there anything in the article about the direction of the flight? I don't think they plan to cross European airspace, and playing around in the north sea is not a good idea, if they not looking for subs. But they don't do this at supersonc speed. An attempt to cross Scandinavia will most likely lead to a crossing of Swedish airspace, and they stated some years back that they would shoot down any military airship violating Swedish borders. The statement was primarly directed towards cruise missiles. That remains Barent's sea (sp??) (That is include sp?? where needed) and the Kola peninsula. And will that be a vise flightpath?? An other possibility is to operate at an very high altitude, but then, what is the purpose for the f111? Perhaps they been escorted to a startpoint, refueled and start the real mission? If so, they would make lot's of noise, and should be detected on sesmographs all around Europe. This lead to a neat idea, what about checking out data from seimographs around the world and correlate them with reported eartquakes? Lets say from 1980 and forward... Missing eartquakes might be Aurora... johnbl@ifi.uio.no I don't represent anybody but myself. ------------------------------ From: gwh@lurnix.COM Date: Fri, 04 Dec 92 13:42:09 -0800 Subject: Re: WSJ Aurora Article Recall that it's not necessary for a vehicle to hide behind it's mach cone all the time; very few high-speed vehicles actually do so. If I recall correctly the speed on the SR71 to where the wingtips extend past the mach cone is something like Mach 2.5 . [Someone else should verify this, that's off the top of my head from calculations done in 1987] - -george ------------------------------ From: DEICHMAN@cisco.nosc.mil Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1992 09:12 PDT Subject: Mach 8 Spy Plane in _JDW_ next week! This was in this morning's paper (Sat., 5 Dec 92): MACH 8 SPY PLANES TO BE DETAILED LONDON - The U.S. Air Force is operating a new generation of secret spy planes capable of reaching eight times the speed of sound, possibly in the California and Nevada deserts, "Jane's Defence Weekly" said. In a report, prepared for next week's issue, the military affairs magazine said yesterday that the triangular-shaped planes have been in service since 1989. Paul Beaver, "Jane's" editor, said the $1 billion plane, dubbed Aurora, could reach cruising speeds of up to Mach 8, or 5,280 mph. -Associated Press ------------------------------ From: mike@shower.rain.com (Michael Heggen) Date: Sat, 5 Dec 92 13:57:31 PST Subject: Re: Shameless swipe of news articel (yep, Aurora) Pat Hayes writes: > > LOS ANGELES (UPI) -- Lockheed Corp. has built a secret spy plane > On several occasions over the past year, California residents have > reported feeling what seemed to be small earthquakes, but > representatives of the U.S. Geological Survey have said in response no > earthquake was responsible and that a supersonic aircraft was the likely > source. Imagine this poor guy at USGS answering the phone: "Yes, ma'am, we're certain it was not an earthquake. The epicenter was several miles up." "No, ma'am, we don't know what it was for certain." "No, ma'am, there is no such thing as an airquake." - -- Michael Heggen "An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy." --Weinberg's Corollary to Murphy's Computer Law ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V2 #22 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". 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