From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V2 #41 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 30 December 1992 Volume 02 : Number 041 In this issue: Project SLEIGH Aurora Flight Sciences SR-71 == Strategic Recon 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: Ian Woodrow Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 14:19:38 GMT Subject: Project SLEIGH kuryakin@bcstec.ca.boeing.com said on 23 December.... > Of course, since the vehicle has been seen to drop square, ballistic objects, > it must be have a strike mission as well as cargo... Actually I saw something firring this description around midnight on December 24th. It did seem to drop many square objects which I observed closely. They seemed to home in on the chimney pots of various houses, then at an altitude of about 50 or 60 metres they deployed a parachute and fell slowly into the chimneys. I waited for explosions but there were none, so I don't think the vehicle does have a strike mission. I think it was possibly on a resupply mission. Oddly enough, later the next day there were strange materials found in garbage cans. The material was some sort of outer wrapping and I believe it is connected with the supply mission of the previous night. The wrappings were the same colourings as the objects dropped - a strange type of camoflage as the colours were very bright and noticable. The bright colours are exactly as would be expected in a supply drop in snowy conditions. Hmmm @@ WOODY____________________________________________________________________ @@@ Ian Woodrow, Computing Service, Uni of Glasgow, GLASGOW G12 8QQ, Scotland\ @@ > @ _________ FAX:__041-330-4808_____________________________________________/ ------------------------------ From: TOM PETRISKO <0004343121@mcimail.com> Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 14:54 GMT Subject: Aurora Flight Sciences Aurora Flight Sciences Corp., located at Manassas, Va. has developed an unmanned, gasoline and liquid oxygen powered airplane. The aircraft called Perseus, is a high altitude research aircraft designed to fly at an altitude of 18 miles. This is the first of two planes built under contract for NASA to measure the ozone layer. The company was founded by several MIT graduates who developed the the human powered Light Eagle and Daedalus aircraft while at MIT. The part that gets real interesting is that the president of the firm, John S. Langford worked at Lockheed's "Skunk Works" after graduation from MIT for a couple of years on stealth aircraft. Then he went back to MIT for graduate studies and was project leader on the human-powered aircraft development at MIT. Now he runs Aurora Flight Sciences. I wonder how he picked the name Aurora for his company, kind of makes you speculate a little. Tom ------------------------------ From: rschnapp@metaflow.com (Russ Schnapp) Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 11:38:53 PST Subject: SR-71 == Strategic Recon I was reading the stuff about aircraft designations and a question arose in my mind. Obviously the 'SR' in SR-71 stands for Strategic Recon, but I believe that most of the 71's missions were for tactical recon and BDA. Perhaps it was originally designated 'strategic' because it was built in the middle of the cold war and was used to initially determine Soviet and Warsaw Pact nuclear capabilities. Does anyone here have another possibility or perhaps the correct answer? -Michael I suspect that the SR designation arose to cover a change in mission. The original designation was supposedly RS-71, for Recon/Strike, although only the YF-12 ever had any offensive capability. LBJ, so the story goes, inadvertently transposed the two letters when he announced the aircraft for (what else) political purposes. Presumably, now that the name was public, the Air Force came up with a meaning that was more suitable to the mission. Besides, with eyes (and ELINT ears, for that matter) that sharp and far-sighted, the SR probably did gather strategic info fairly often. ...Russ Schnapp BIX: rschnapp Email: netcom!metaflow!rschnapp or rschnapp@metaflow.com Metaflow Technologies Voice: 619/452-6608x230; FAX: 619/452-0401 La Jolla, California Unless otw specified, I`m speaking only for myself! ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V2 #41 ******************************** 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". 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