From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V2 #36 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Monday, 21 December 1992 Volume 02 : Number 036 In this issue: Foggy Trio, Aurora and DynaSoar RE: Foggy Trio, Aurora and DynaSoar Borealis and Australis? (two Auroras?) 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: Larry Setlow Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 00:19:58 -0800 Subject: Foggy Trio, Aurora and DynaSoar From: jac@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (John Clear) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 92 17:15:01 EST Maybe they are on this list to 'lead' us off in the wrong direction. If you knew someone was close to the secret, but had a means at your disposal to side track it, wouldnt you use it? If I knew anything about anything discussed on this list, I would say nothing whatsoever about that subject. I have it on pretty good authority that if people did otherwise (in any substantive way), they could very well find themselves de-briefed from any sensitive programs they might have access to. Note that this doesn't just mean divulging classified material (which is obviously not going to happen unless the divulger is criminally stupid or just plain criminal); many (I would venture to say most, if not all) special access programs -- even publicly acknowledged ones -- prohibit cleared personnel from any disclosure whatsoever, unless the information is specifically cleared for public release. I bet this would apply to misleads as well, unless they were sanctioned by Those In Charge; but I have to agree with Mary: I doubt anybody thinks we're worth that. ------------------------------ From: "Craig Harding" Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 10:01:17 NZT Subject: RE: Foggy Trio, Aurora and DynaSoar In Message Sat, 19 Dec 92 18:22:47 PST, shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) writes: >In regard to this last point, I'm going to echo something one of my >colleagues posted in a newsgroup the other day--we, the flight test >community, knew about the F-117 long ago, because we knew that people >were vanishing into the project. We knew who was building it, we knew >about the first crash, we knew when it became operational. We didn't >know what it looked like or what kind of plane it was, but we knew it >was there. The same was true of the B-2 before the Administration >decided to tell the taxpayers about it, although in this case there >was a very strong feeling that it was a flying wing. I saw the message Mary is referring to, from Al Bowers I believe? One thing he also said was that along similar lines, he *hadn't* seen any "hole" appearing in personnel that could be attributed to Aurora. I notice with some interest that Mary didn't make any mention of Aurora at all in her message (although I may have misinterpreted it. Mary, do you mean that you haven't noticed any such vanishing personnel either?) -- C. - -- Craig Harding C.R.Harding@massey.ac.nz Massey University BBS: +64 6 3551342 3/12/24 New Zealand "I keep on telling him there's only one g in crzjgrdwldiwdc" ------------------------------ From: freeman@MasPar.COM (Jay R. Freeman) Date: Sun, 20 Dec 92 13:43:50 -0800 Subject: Borealis and Australis? (two Auroras?) Hmn, it is plausible that the US has a small spaceplane of one sort or another, and I might believe many things of its performance and mission, but it seems to me unlikely that it would be found tucked up under the tail of a KC-135, chugging across the North Sea. *If* we have a small spaceplane, then it seems to me that there is probably at least one other small high-performance vehicle; namely, the one reported in Wall Street Journal and in Jane's recently. It would be plausible for there to be two vehicles in another sense: A spaceplane probably has higher technical risks -- or at least, different ones - -- than a hypersonic air-breather. It might make sense to try to develop both on the theory that if one failed the other could take up some of the slack. If there are two vehicles then quite likely we know very little about what the spaceplane looks like -- it's not too likely to have spent much time cruising about within easy looking distance of the ground or of aircraft. And if both vehicles work, then it might be plausible for there to be leaks and/or declassification of the lower-performance one soon, if only to use it as a cover for the orbiter for as long as possible. -- Jay Freeman ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V2 #36 ******************************** 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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