From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #22 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Friday, 25 February 1994 Volume 05 : Number 022 In this issue: Re: Magneto-hydro(aero?)dynamics "breakthrough" Machrihanish Airfield/Baby Groom Re: Machrihanish Airfield/Baby Groom Re: Machrihanish Airfield/Baby Groom Re: Cash-Landrum Las Vegas Loud Noises Re: Exotic Fuels and Magneto-hydro Dynamics Nuclear-powered aircraft... Nellis Responds to Booms Jane's IDR/AP Stealth Article 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: rakoczynskij@agcs.com (Jurek Rakoczynski) Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 11:13:21 -0700 (MST) Subject: Re: Magneto-hydro(aero?)dynamics "breakthrough" Michael Chui wrote: > > The basic technology is simple. A successful laboratory test > used a plate combining electricity-conducting stainless steel > patches and powerful magnets on the side of a model resembling a > boat hull. > ``All we were doing is very simply passing a current through the > water in patterns. The result was the formation of a new structure > in the water close to the hull surface,'' said Nosenchuck. ``It's > like putting ball bearings under a refrigerator to move it.'' This sounds like nothing more than combining an inside-out MHD with a conventional propulsion system. Popular Science even ran an article about it ~20 years ago where a university built a 6' minisub based on the principle: essentially just a linear motor with the water being the conductor. It was the only propulsion system on the minimsub. It wasn't very efficient and (salt)water conductivity was a factor. But using this principle (to push the water along the surface of a boat hull) when combine with a conventional propeller would certainly help a boat move faster. But efficient use of power is the problem. > The AP story opens with a reference to "reducing energy-consuming > drag on moving aircraft..." However, further detailed references to airborne > vehicles in the article are limited to a comment about "rocket re-entry > vehicles." It seems like the need to "pass current" through the medium > would limit the applicability of this technology to airborne vehicles > which travel fast enough to create plasma conditions. Does anyone have > any further details on this technology? I presume it uses the ionized air from hypersonic speeds as the conductor. > Could this be a public resurfacing > :-) of this research, which Larry described as disappearing a number > of years ago (other than in references such as _Red October_)? I pesume your refering to the following text that was passed around here originally from: AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY, March 9, 1992 - "Black World" Engineers, Scientists Encourage Using Highly Classified Technology for Civil Applications - William B. Scott/Los Angeles: <<>> By negatively ionizing air molecules ahead of an aircraft, then charging the nose to the same polarity, an electrostatic field was formed. The field tended to repel or alter the molecules' path as the aircraft approached, according to the article. If the "black world" actually has developed feasible ways to reduce airframe drag substantially with controlled electrostatic fields, commercial aircraft manufacturers and airlines should be campaigning mightily for the technology. The potential fuel and cost savings for just American, United and Delta would be staggering. <<>> This is differant than what I described above. > Michael Chui > mchui@cs.indiana.edu - -- Jurek Rakoczynski, AG Communication Systems, POB 52179, Phoenix, AZ. 85072-2179 Inet: rakoczynskij@agcs.com Voice: +1 602 581 4867 Inet: JUREK.RAKOCZYNSKI@gte.sprint.com Fax: +1 602 581 4022 ------------------------------ From: Bruce Henderson Date: Thu, 24 Feb 94 10:35:23 -0800 Subject: Machrihanish Airfield/Baby Groom >Why, they've all been moved to "Baby Groom"! >Where is Baby Groom? Ah, that's the question for you Skunkers. <> I'd put my $0.02 in that they are operating out of Groom still. The facility is large enough, with enough hangers to house several projects at the same time. The way to find other remote facilities would be to see where the "Janets" go. If there are such flights to other areas, you can be sure that they are supporting something. The Scottish airfield may have become redundant. There is some thought that there is a forward base for this thing in Saudia Arabia. It would be easier to build it there, lots of remote areas, and the kingdom would view such a base as a prestiegious honor. Think about it bruce ------------------------------ From: TOM PETRISKO <0004343121@mcimail.com> Date: Thu, 24 Feb 94 11:09 EST Subject: Re: Machrihanish Airfield/Baby Groom Your speculation on a "Baby Groom" airfield would also need a qualifier; is the aircraft still a prototype or is it the production version. If it is the production model, they could all be contract maintenance workers. Even the refueling tankers could be out of normal channels. Remember, its all been done in the past. Also, who really owns the aircraft. ------------------------------ From: Rick Pavek Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 11:04:46 -0800 Subject: Re: Machrihanish Airfield/Baby Groom IMHO, Machrihanish was likely the place where something odd made an energency stop, rather then being regularly based there. RIck SR-75/XR-7 _|_*O*_|_ | Rick Pavek \ __|__ / | HA!! \_______/_(O)_\_______/ | Ruby - kuryakin@hebron.connected.com \___/---\___/ | Galactic Gumshoe ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 12:06:34 -0800 Subject: Re: Cash-Landrum >>The road where it happened runs through a pine forest. >>The object descended in front of Betty Cash's car, right >>over the road, to tree top level. It was intensely bright, >>emitted a lot of heat, and it was belching intermittent >>flame that ran down and touched the road (reactor coolant >>leak - sodium?) from where the object was hovering near the >>tops of the pine trees. It was also beeping quite loudly. >>Larry (Wed, 23 Feb 1994 17:36:47 -0800) J. Pharabod responds: >If you think of sodium cooled FBR (Fast Breeder Reactors), you are >wrong. These reactors, as any present day fission reactors, are >prehistoric monsters totally unsuited for aircraft propulsion. Well I've been wrong before. No problem there. I was conjecturing, tossing out an idea to stimulate discussion. I wasn't thinking of a FBR however. I was actually thinking of an indirect cycle nuclear propulsion engine. Pure conjecture, to stimulate discussion. As Paul Keller indicated, these engines, which were researched by Pratt and Whitney during the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program (ANP), used liquid metals or highly pressurized water as the heat transfer medium to transport heat from the reactor core to the heat addition process in the jet engine. It was a lot cleaner than the direct cycle engine that everybody has been talking about, where the air flow after the compressor stage of the turbojet flows through the core of the reactor, and then out through the nozzle. Of course, we might be talking rocket here, not airbreather. This is just an attempt to start somewhere in the analysis. >The above description fits far better an ordinary terrestrial >vehicle hovering with conventional engines and conventional fuel or >propellant (like VTOLs or the DC-X). > I hope ETs have more refined >crafts and engines... I have no idea. > Is there any real proof of radiation damage ? >There are also ordinary burns. Yes, she suffered burns as well. But these burns are not of the normal variety. The apparent aging of her hands, and the blistering were quite unusual for burns. According to Dr. McLelland, Betty Cash's physician, whom I also talked with, skin samples from Betty's hands were biopsied. The biopsies, according to her physician, were consistent with radiation dermatitis. The biopsy indicated 2-4 grays of radiation (a gray is a measure of radiation absorbed by tissue). Dr. McLelland is not in nuclear medicine. He is in family practice, but of course, he just read the report from the lab. He also indicated to me that her medical records have not all been released by the hospital, even to him. For example, her white cell counts directly after the incident, when she was hospitalized, have not been released to him (as of early 1992). The case is further hampered for aerospace researchers by the fact that details of the object seem to be inconsistent in the reports from the major people involved with the case. This may be due to the great ambient light, that hurt the eyes, that was put out by this object, the absolute terror they experienced, and the fact that they are not knowledgeable of these matters. The high level descriptions of the machine are consistent however. It's interesting that most of the 20+ helicopters seen near the object, seem to have been Chinook's. This is interesting in that Chinooks were used during Vietnam to recover downed U.S. aircraft. Larry ------------------------------ From: Heidi Vogel Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 12:18:56 -0800 Subject: Las Vegas Loud Noises It was the Concord..... Been flying in and out of Las Vegas for a couple of months...... Pretty small plane for such a loud sonic Boom.... ^^^^^^^BLONDIE ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 15:19:34 -0800 Subject: Re: Exotic Fuels and Magneto-hydro Dynamics Paul Michael Keller writes: >First, on the subject matter of exotic fuels, the primary reason for the >speculation about Aurora being powered by a cryogenic fuel is that con- >ventional jet fuels simply do not burn fast enough to be of much use >much above Mach 3 or so. If AURORA is a ramjet then the flame speed is not an issue. Actually, for hypersonics, heat balance (having heat sinking capacity) is also important. > The conventional wisdom is that methane is >good for Mach 5 or so, so a Mach 6-8 Aurora powered by liquid methane >would be pushing methane pretty hard. Above Mach 8, only hydrogen >will do. There are people researching hydrocarbons with additives or doing precombustion. There are many techniques that have been looked at. I don't know what the Mach number limit is. As I said above, heat balance is important. >As to the new discovery on drag reduction and aerospace applications, >there was an article which appeared yesterday over on the newsgroup >clari.tw.aerospace which stated that "The technology...involves using >an electromagnetic field to calm turbulent fluid surrounding a moving >vessel and thereby eliminate much of the resistance." As others have >recognized, this will only work on a conducting fluid. ... The potential uses of this in hypersonics are fascinating, if it applies. The heat transfer through a turbulent boundary layer is much worse than a laminar one. If this allows controlled laminarization of a turbulent boundary layer, in a hypersonic regime, that is a MAJOR find I would think. Also, if the skin friction can be lessened in the hypersonic regime, WOW! I can picture applications inside scramjet ducts as well, for the above reasons. Perhaps the conduction of the air can be tripped via external burning with seeding via aklali metals, like in MHD wind tunnels. Or just the propulsion applications, where you would arrive at a higher temperature sooner obviously, are fascinating. I'm anxious to learn more! Bruce wrote: >>>date of this incident? Any chance this is connected with TimberWind? Paul responds: >Not likely. Sorry, I'm not a UFO fan. Then let's take it out of the UFO realm! >> There was an article in AIR & SPACE/Smithsonian a long while ago about a >>nuclear rocket. >Do you have an approximate date for this? I'd be interested in finding this >in a library. There was a different issue than the Project Pluto issue. The cover was about nuclear space ships to Mars (or Jupiter or wherever), if I recall correctly. One of the drawings indeed showed a vehicle VERY close to the Cash Landrum vehicle, except the top half was missing. The Cash-Landrum machine was a diamond shaped vehicle with a circular cross section. The Air and Space issue I'm referring to showed a nuclear powered space vehicle that was the bottom half of a diamond with a circular cross section (an inverted right circular cone). One could initially wonder if a cone on top (thus creating a diamond shape with a circular cross section) was done for drag reduction in the atmosphere. I'm just throwing out a thought here. >>BTW- What is/was TimberWind? >Timberwind was a late-80s-early 90s SDIO project to develop a solid-cored >nuclear rocket engine. It was a particle bed reactor where the propulsive fuel (hydrogen) was circulated through the nuclear particle bed, transferring heat from the nuclear fuel pellets to the H2. The high energy H2 was then expanded in a nozzle. > The news about it broke when it came out that SDIO >wanted to test it by flying it in the atmosphere. I might add, fly it in the atmosphere without people knowing. The Timberwind people didn't release information about it. It was disclosed by a deep-throat type of leak to the Federation of American Scientists. I believe it has been cancelled, but the disclosure indicates that this type of thing was alive and well. They wanted to get SDI battle stations into orbit quicker using Timberwind nuclear rocket engines as upper stages to Titan IVs. Nuclear rockets definitely make SSTO possible! That is part of the alleged draw that we are starting with here. Larry ------------------------------ From: Corey Lawson Date: Thu, 24 Feb 1994 16:23:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: Nuclear-powered aircraft... Anyone remember the article in either _Air and Space_ or _Discover_ a couple of years ago about the USAF's Pluto project? Nuclear-powered Mach 3+ cruise missile. 500MW air-cooled reactor heated air or hydrogen enough to work as a propulsion unit. They actually tested the reactor (miles of oil well pipeline used to store the air) at Edwards or something. But the reactor was unshielded, and once people started thinking about it, it had several drawbacks, the biggest one being how to fly it over friendly nations. It was designed to fly at LOW altitudes... So one has the problem of a shockwave, and also with the unshielded reactor spewing nucleotides all over. - -Corey Lawson alfalfa@booster.u.washington.edu - ------------------------------------- U U W W W Bothell Campus U U W W W W =================== UUU W W Computer Facilities - ------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: psychospy@aol.com Date: Thu, 24 Feb 94 21:25:14 EST Subject: Nellis Responds to Booms [The following news release was issued Feb. 22, 1994, by Nellis AFB Directorate of Public Affairs.] NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. MEMORANDUM FOR NEWS EDITORS The following statement is issued to your organization in response to your query on public queries concerning sonic-boom type noise and vibrations in the Las Vegas Valley today: "Nellis AFB officials have researched the calls we and other county agencies received this morning about sonic boom-type noise and vibrations mostly in the northern end of the Las Vegas valley. There were bombing operations being conducted on the Nellis range near Indian Springs at approximately the time of the complaints. However, similar operations also were conducted on the same range area Friday with no complaints received. The range is more than 45 miles from Las Vegas. We received no complaints today from the Indian Springs area, and observers near the bombing did not report any unusual incidents. We have not experienced this problem in the past and are surprised if such normal operations could have caused today's incidents. But it is possible that unusual atmospheric conditions today may have caused the bombing noise to reflect down into the Las Vegas valley with unexpected strength. We constantly monitor our range activities to actively avoid such occurrences where we can anticipate them." ------------------------------ From: rb3@aol.com Date: Fri, 25 Feb 94 01:46:19 EST Subject: Jane's IDR/AP Stealth Article The following is the text from an article I saw in today's newspaper. I am sorry not to be able to include the sketch, but when the article says it looks like a B-2, they mean it. The proportions are a bit off, and the cockpit is different, but it is so akin to the B-2 that at first I thought it was a stock drawing. Enjoy, Ran ________________________________________ Wilmington News Journal, February 24, 1994, Page A8 REPORT: U.S. HAS NEW SPY AIRCRAFT By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press LONDON - The U.S. Air Force has developed a new stealth aircraft capable of spying or bombing, an authoritative British journal reported Wednesday. Jane's International Defense Review published a drawing of the diamond shaped plane, which strongly resembles a smaller version of the B-2 stealth bomber. The unidentified aircraft has been seen in flight across the southwestern United States and was captured on two videotapes, one made near Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada, the magazine said in its March issue. The Air Force "is not in a position to comment on the story, one way or another," said spokesman, Col. Doug Kennet, in Washington. American aviation writer Bill Sweetman, who wrote the report, said he believes the plane is a a superior successor to the F-117 stealth fighter, the world's first radar evading warplane. The new aircraft flies at medium to low altitude at over 500 mph, said Clifford Beal, the magazine's features editor who viewed the tapes. The F-117, conceived in 1978 and first tested in 1981, was the only aircraft to attack heavily defended Baghdad during the gulf war in 1991. The $46 million jets destroyed more than 40 percent of their targets, and were never hit by Iraqi fire. The F-117 was put into service so quickly that some features of conventional fighters were omitted. "Compared with the F-117, the new aircraft would have greater range, all-weather sensors, greater weapons capacity" and perhaps new measures to frustrate advanced radars, Sweetman said. "The F-117 does not have any ability to hit targets that are covered by cloud. This aircraft could very likely do that," he said. The sketch is based on the assumption that the single-seat, twin-engine aircraft has a wing span of about 66 feet and is no less than 40 feet at the center line. It probably weighs just over 30 tons fully loaded and could be powered by two General Electric F404 engines, Sweetman said. He said the U.S. Air Force acquired 250 F404 engines during the F-117 program. Since 59 F-117s were built, there would be enough extra engines for between 35 and 40 twin-engined aircraft, leaving a 20 percent allowance for spares, he said. Observers first assumed the aircraft was designed for reconnaissance, but other sources have identified it as an attack aircraft, Sweetman said. Earlier this month, CIA Director R. James Woolsey denied the United States is building a new high-speed, high-altitude spy plane to replace the SR-71 Blackbird. But he did not specifically that deny a new generation of spy plane was being developed. _END OF STORY______________________________________ Make you nervous that the AF is not in a positio n to comment on odd aircraft over the continental US? ;-> - RBIII ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #22 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.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 To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. 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