From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #661 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: Skunk Works Digest Saturday, 25 May 1996 Volume 05 : Number 661 In this issue: Re: Declassification of Area-51? Reply: Declassification of Area-51? Re- How fast can we go? Going beyond light. WWW References. RE: Garrett ATF-3 engine - stealth design?? - back on charter! re: unreal Re: Re- How fast can we go? Re: Reply: Declassification of Area-51? Tacit Blues... Re: Reply: Declassification ... Re: Reply: Declassification of Area-51? Re: Declassification of Area-51? Sea Shadow Re(2): How fast can we go? power Re: Reply: Declassification of Area-51? Re: Declassification of Area-51? Re: Power & How fast can we go? 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@ichips.intel.com Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 10:54:05 -0700 Subject: Re: Declassification of Area-51? >The government bold faced lied about Have Blue. Many people protect classified information by lying. It's unfortunate but it happens all the time, even among friends who work together in the defense industry. It's a wierd world. Some people have a talent however for giving answers that aren't lies but at the same time protect the asset. Ben Rich was pretty good at that. Others won't lie but they will honestly give you in essence all the disclaimers such that you no longer even remember your question. >Wasn't it you, Larry, that posted the FOIA request dated a little >before they unveiled it (HAVE BLUE) saying that the Air Force >has no knowledge of it? Errr, ..., I don't think so. I've been on this list for a long time, and posted many things, I don't recall that one. The reason I'd go out to maybe see a secret aircraft is not to protest secrecy like many of you, but to see the airplane. I always got a kick at my fellow airplane nuts who wrapped themselves in the government protest flag to protest secrecy at Area 51, when in reality, all they REALLY wanted, was to see what was flying at Area 51, and they thought, heck! maybe this government protest thing will work! With me it's kind of like going about your business in your front yard at home say, maybe doing yardwork. Suddenly, a beautiful new red Ferrari drives by and goes down your street. You stop and watch it drive by down the street. You notice, that it pulls into a driveway maybe a block away. On your next walk you intentionall decide to walk by that house. Maybe you even start to walk by that house a lot, hoping the owner will be out in the yard so that you can talk to him about the Ferrari (or her - even better)! You don't go up and peer into the garage (at least I don't), but the car is really cool and you want to see it again and find out more about it. This is the nature of why I would hang around test sites. This is also why I look up. Larry ------------------------------ From: "Arif, Rahan" Date: Thu, 23 May 96 13:01:28 cst Subject: Reply: Declassification of Area-51? Thank you very much for setting my facts straight on this. I've learned alot from Larry and Online and I agree with all of you. Now I have a more accurate perspective at looking at this. Larry is correct in being in favor of Area-51 because of all the good programs that came out of it. I'm still unsure about the status of Area-51. Online said "They say it has no official name as its simply a secure test location within the NTS." But then, what is Glenn Campbell after? And what is he trying to accomplish by creating the Area-51 Research Center? Is he after some sort of a public announcement from the Pentagon declassifying Area-51? Sorry to stray from the primary topic of this list like this, but I just want to achieve a more informed perspective. ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 11:14:10 -0700 Subject: Re- How fast can we go? >I'll probably be shot for quoting yet another SF writer but >didn't Arthur C. Clarke upset a lot of people with a speech made >... in which he pointed out that launching an interstellar >probe was pointless during the next 100 years since anything >sent out during that period would inevitably be overtaken >by several generations of technologically improved vessels >before reaching anywhere of any interest. Yes, something like that, excellent point! Ignoring certain types of exploration say, like the Solar System, where a traditionally fast ship might be a useful endeavor to start working on today, the interstellar distances are so vast, that it's going to take something REALLY different. Carl Sagan knew that when he wrote "Contact" and sought the help of Kip Thorne, and the first theoretically feasible worm hole was designed, which gave birth to a new field of physics namely wormhole design, and probably also inspired other interesting theories like Alcubierre's. Larry ------------------------------ From: "Arif, Rahan" Date: Thu, 23 May 96 13:43:24 cst Subject: Going beyond light. WWW References. Does anyone know of any good sources of information on this subject that are on the WWW. Any good WWW sites would be appreciated. It seems like whoever started this topic won't see it end soon. Sincerely, Ray ------------------------------ From: "Paul Heinrich" Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 11:55:32 +0000 Subject: RE: Garrett ATF-3 engine - stealth design?? - back on charter! David Lednicer wrote: > On the same topic - according to Av Week, Tacet Blue was powered > by two Garrett ATF-3s. This engine was previously only used on the Ryan > Compass Cope prototype and some Dassault Falcon 20s (including the Coast > Guard Falcons). Rumors have been around that it was also used on several > secret programs. The engine is very strange in that the turbine is > reverse flow. The air comes out of the compressor, goes to the aft end > of the engine, turns forward, goes through the combustor and turbine and > then turns again and is dumped out through several ports around the core > cowl. I have often wondered why Garrett went to all the trouble - they > claim that this arrangement reduces shaft lengths and makes the > accessories more accesible (they are at the aft end of the whole thing). > It occurs to me that the real reason is that this arrangement makes it > impossible to look up the exhaust, directly at the turbine! Hence, the > rear aspect radar signature is infinitely better, and the IR signature is > also probably better. > Wasn't Compass Cope the "Ryan Firebee"? In that case perhaps all the convolutions in the engine were originally intended to make the engine shorter, all the better to fit inside a small drone? Does anyone know if the Garrett ATF-3s were designed for a particular project? Maybe their stealth qualities were a happy by-product of other design criteria and maybe not. Another possibility is that some smart engineer or team killed several birds with one stone. Paul "learning not to lurk" Heinrich ------------------------------ From: ahanley@usace.mil Date: Thu, 23 May 96 11:45:18  Subject: re: unreal Hey; If it's on TV, it has to be true, doesn't it. Didn't Steve Austin do that kind of stuff back all the time back in the '70s? He was Air Force. Art Hanley These thoughts, such as they are, do not represent the thoughts of my employers, if in fact they choose to have any ------------------------------ From: BaDKaRmA Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 20:19:19 +0100 (BST) Subject: Re: Re- How fast can we go? On 23 May 1996, Alun Whittaker wrote: > BaDKaRmA wrote: > >> If we made, and launched these 'vehicles' could they overtake > >> the voyager probes? thus makeing then totally redundent? > > I'll probably be shot for quoting yet another SF writer but > didn't Arthur C. Clarke upset a lot of people with a speech made > at a UN conference in the sixties (I can't find the reference but > I know it was re-published in a book of his essays) in which he > pointed out that launching an interstellar probe was pointless > during the next 100 years since anything sent out during that > period would inevitably be overtaken by several generations of > technologically improved vessels before reaching anywhere > of any interest. > > Alun Whittaker > > What then would happen during the 100+ years that come after that, would the new generation vessels not be sent for that same reason? Taa Muchly, Patrick Joyce, engineer ______________________________________________________________________________ (md1br@herts.ac.uk) [32-11-42-13-51-24-42-34] [#9010-3425-3498-AEG-DIN-TOP] 'If you never happen to get this mail, Will anybody read it? I hope it makes the journey. The words I write matter to me, it would be a shame if they were wasted, and lost in an electronic void, for an eternity' -P.Joyce 1996 ______________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ From: OnLine Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 23:02:02 Subject: Re: Reply: Declassification of Area-51? rarif@chiaolink.dcmdc.dla.mil writes: > I'm still unsure about the status of Area-51. Online said "They > say it has no official name as its simply a secure test location > within the NTS." But then, what is Glenn Campbell after? And what is > he trying to accomplish by creating the Area-51 Research Center? Is he > after some sort of a public announcement from the Pentagon > declassifying Area-51? The notion that the shadowy figures in sedans with govt. plates deny A-51's existence is very appealing in a dramatic sense...what else would you fly from a non-existent air base but non existent a/c etc. But please be clear on this matter; it does exist...no question about it... that's official..if you want I'll pull the fax from my files to let you know the exact wording. Larry's right...we all want to know what they've got out there..we all want an 'Access All Areas' pass to Groom Lake...but sadly, desire to know isn't the same as need to know. I'm not sure what Glenn Campbell is after...maybe he's concerned with the way the base is administered...the land grabs, heavy security on the public roads and land that are 'close' to the place. With the increasing availability of low cost, hi-tech night vision gizmos 'they' had to ensure the bases's security by extending the buffer zone around it. I think it's a fair bet that A-51's functioning has been compromised to some extent with its high profile...I've heard Australia has been the venue for some pretty odd a/c...but I'm still looking into that...at the moment it's just heresay...could be that's where some British 'black' are under test...we'll see. The notion of adaptive camo to reduce an a/c's visual sig is one of the programmes that's allegedly underway out there according to AW&ST. I wonder if electro-luminescent polymers may be the basis of this tech...seems to be quite a lot of work going on in this area at various universities...I wonder if anyone has heard of a company called Signature Products ? Comments welcome Best David ------------------------------ From: David Lednicer Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 16:05:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tacit Blues... Chuck, I think you are getting a little confused - go look carefully in Jane's. The Garrett TFE731 is the commonly used turbofan, as seen on LearJets, etc. The Garrett ATF-3 is a totally different engine, only appearing on Falcon 200s (HU-25 Guardian, the Ryan Compass Cope and now, Tacit Blue. While the 731 is a conventional flow, front to back, turbofan, the ATF-3 is a bizarre, reverse flow turbine turbofan. The ATF-3 is one of a kind and yes, you can't see the turbine by looking up the exhausts, because of the unusual configuration (my 89-90 Jane's has an excellent cut-away of the ATF-3). BTW - Garrett developed the ATF-3 in LA, while the 731 was done in Phoenix (or visa-versa), which explains why they developed two turbofans of comparable thrust (the ATF-3 has a 1000lb higher rating) in the same time period. - ------------------------------------------------------------------- David Lednicer | "Applied Computational Fluid Dynamics" Analytical Methods, Inc. | email: dave@amiwest.com 2133 152nd Ave NE | tel: (206) 643-9090 Redmond, WA 98052 USA | fax: (206) 746-1299 ------------------------------ From: chosa@chosa.win.net (Byron Weber) Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 17:57:32 Subject: Re: Reply: Declassification ... >I think it's a fair bet that A-51's functioning has been compromised to >some extent with its high profile...I've heard Australia has been the >venue for some pretty odd a/c...but I'm still looking into that...at the >moment it's just heresay...could be that's where some British 'black' are >under test...we'll see. > >Best > >David > > A couple of years ago after the B-2 was announced, Northrop's Dr. John Cashin, who was principally responsible for it's development, suddenly and quite unexpectedly quit. He moved to Australia along with other lesser known, but equally well qualified engineers and scientists, not to be heard from since. In an interview with the LA Times he gave no reason for quitting and said if he ever came back to the US he would gladly go back to work for Northrop. Given his truely obsessive and eccentric preoccupation with aeronautical achievements, you can bet he isnt laying on the beach. Byron ------------------------------ From: dadams@netcom.com (Dean Adams) Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 00:59:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: Reply: Declassification of Area-51? > The notion that the shadowy figures in sedans with govt. plates deny A-51's > existence is very appealing in a dramatic sense...what else would you fly > from a non-existent air base but non existent a/c etc. But please be clear > on this matter; it does exist...no question about it... that's official..if > you want I'll pull the fax from my files to let you know the exact wording. Yes, that is correct, *today*... BUT up until last year it officially did NOT exist, and the gov. most definitely denyed everything about it. Now they deny just about everything except the fact that it exists. :) ------------------------------ From: dougt@u011.oh.vp.com (Doug Tiffany) Date: Fri, 24 May 96 6:17:25 EDT Subject: Re: Declassification of Area-51? Larry Writes: > > Errr, ..., I don't think so. I've been on this list for a long time, > and posted many things, I don't recall that one. Oops, maybe Paul McGuiness? I enjoy reading comments from the both of you and must have gotten confused. - -- A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of house I live in, how much is in my bank account, or what kind of car I drive, but the world may be a different place because I was important in the life of a child. Douglas J. Tiffany dougt@u011.oh.vp.com Varco-Pruden Buildings Van Wert, Ohio ------------------------------ From: Jeff H Clark Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 11:54:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Sea Shadow While the subject of models of things made by Skunkworks is passing by, I just want to add that for whoever's interested, Revell now has a model of the Sea Shadow ship out, and I've seen it at a local Wal-mart so it shouldn't be hard to find. Jeff Clark jclark@freenet.scri.fsu.edu ------------------------------ From: "Terry Colvin" Date: Fri, 24 May 96 08:35:45 GMT Subject: Re(2): How fast can we go? Forwarded from the Space Tech list: Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 14:11:14 GMT From: Henry Spencer Subject: How fast can we go? In article <9604228327.AA832782543@fhu.disa.mil> "Terry Colvin" writes: >...Does anyone on the list know what sort of specific impulse >(Isp) could be foreseably obtained from an ion rocket? ... The Isp of ion rockets is basically unlimited. Any particle accelerator is an ion rocket with a truly immense Isp. With ion rockets, Isp is not the problem. The problems are terribly low thrust and terribly heavy power sources. The power-source mass problem, in particular, gets worse as Isp rises. For an ion rocket, typically there is an optimum Isp for a given mission, and it's *not* the maximum Isp available. Roughly speaking, it's the Isp where the combined mass of fuel and power source is minimum. Any attempt to achieve really high velocities with ion rockets is also going to have to think carefully about acceleration times. It is hard, for quite fundamental reasons, to get high thrust out of ion rockets. >...By contrast, the nearest star is >270,000 AUs out. (Anyone care to check my math? Even I'm a bit >surprised by this. I'm assuming the nearest star is 4.3 light years >away, 1 AU=93E6 miles, c=3E8 m/s.) That's about right. A light-year is roughly ten petameters. An AU is about 150 gigameters. So there are roughly 70,000 AU to the light-year. - -- Unix was a breakthrough. | Henry Spencer Windows 95 is more like a smash-and-grab. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu ------------------------------ From: robert.herndon@Central.Sun.COM (Robert Herndon) Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 10:56:46 -0600 Subject: power Re: rockets for the long haul, ion rockets do have a very high Isp compared w/ chemical fuels, but they're still an order of magnitude too small to get up to decent speeds, relativistically speaking. In order to get a mass to 86% of the speed of light, a mass of the same size has to be completely converted to propulsive energy. Since a nuclear reactor (fission) can convert about 1% of its mass to energy, we're not going to go too fast if we have to accelerate the reactor too. Fusion could conceivably do better, from memory (I don't have a good periodic table here) about 3%. Still not great, unless you can avoid carrying the fuel (e.g., Bussard ramjet). Of course, this just means that we'd have to use a much higher propellant&power/payload ratio, or go to external propulsion. If one really wants to be serious about interstellar (or even rapid intra-stellar-system) travel, then antimatter starts becoming a serious choice. The problem then becomes learning how to manufacture (and store and manipulate) it. It's not something we'd want to be doing on earth, given the potential for disaster. On the other hand, anti-matter itself, at least, doesn't have the problems that fission and fusion have -- neutrons. (Irradiation by neutrons makes things radioactive, creating all kinds of nasty waste disposal problems for nuclear reactors.) I don't see serious interest in the bulk production of antimattter happening in the next 25 years. I suppose, however, that if it had turned out that nuclear bombs could not be built, then maybe the nuclear arms race would have started off with the production of antimatter bombs. It would probably have taken *at least* three or four times the effort, cost, and time of the Manhattan Project (assuming nuclear reactors _were_ feasible). Sounds like a premise for a science fiction novel. /r ------------------------------ From: OnLine Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 19:44:20 Subject: Re: Reply: Declassification of Area-51? >>I wrote: >Dean writes: >> The notion that the shadowy figures in sedans with govt. plates deny >> A-51's existence is very appealing in a dramatic sense...what else would >>you fly from a non-existent air base but non existent a/c etc. But >>please be clear on this matter; it does exist...no question about it... >>that's official..if you want I'll pull the fax from my files to let you >>know the exact wording. >Yes, that is correct, *today*... BUT up until last year it officially >did NOT exist, and the gov. most definitely denyed everything about it. >Now they deny just about everything except the fact that it exists. :) Absolutely..the purpose of my post was to bring those who weren't aware of its *current* status 'up to speed' rather than have them believe that nothing had changed with regard to its 'existence' and keep this myth going...after all we have to maintain the integrity of this group for accuracy ;) BTW...are there any other facilities in the US that 'don't exist' or was A-51 unique in that sense ? Best David ------------------------------ From: Wei-Jen Su Date: Sat, 25 May 1996 02:10:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Declassification of Area-51? On Thu, 23 May 1996, OnLine wrote: > > . The only reason the Stealth was ever declassified was because it > >was flying and by chance it was photographed and made public. Then there > >was no hiding it anymore. For the most part, it all came out. > > This is news to me. The first shot I saw of the F-117A was from a USAF > press conference...not a very good one at that. I understood the reason it > went public was because they wanted to operate in daylight...after all it > had been flying for years in secret. hmmm... I believe the first public picture of the F-117 was the famous picture in the front page of AW&ST in the late 80's which show the "shadow" of the aircraft from the the bottom of it. The photographer claim that he was "filling gas" in a early morning in Mojave Desert and hear a jet noise very differents than most of the aircraft and took what I believe two shoot of it. I don't remember the name of the photographer but his last name sound like from the now Ex-Soviet Union. A couple of weeks after they published the picture, the F-117 was declassified. D. M. Giangreco said that the declassification of the F-117 is due to the saturation of the airfield. At the beginning of the F-117 program they didn't have that much aircraft, but at the end, it was saturate the small airfield. Plus, they must flight at night only... and sometimes during the summer, they only have 4 hours of available night cover. So, the pilot and the field was saturate, and stressful for pilots to fly at night schedule and they have to turn a daylight schedule during weekends (because of their family). From my point of view, I believe the F-117 was declassified because the "enemy" already have a lot of information about the aircraft, and USAF already have (or are working with) a next generation of F-117 type aircraft. May the Force be with you Su Wei-Jen E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die..." Roy Batty (Blade Runner) ------------------------------ From: keller@eos.ncsu.edu Date: Sat, 25 May 96 19:57:02 EDT Subject: Re: Power & How fast can we go? There have been a number of replies to my earlier posting on this topic which I'd like to followup on. I'm not quoting anyone else to save space & bandwidth because there are a number of points brought out by a number of different people I'd like to respond to. First, thanks to J. Pharabod for the tip on the www sites on the topic. I checked out one (http://152.2.22.81/lunar/ssdengr.html (Starship Designs)), and they have number of descriptions of possible interstellar concepts there. The only two I looked at carefully were the JPL thousand AU concept, which suggested a nuclear ion rocket powered probe which supposedly could do 20 AUs/year. That seems a bit pessimistic, but I suppose that if that had been a fairly serious NASA proposal, it was probably also quite conservative. The other concept I looked over was the _Orion_ proposal for a massive bomb-powered ship. The claim of a delta-v capability of 1.5% of the speed of light (c) for it is ridiculous, and can be easily refuted with only high school physics and geometry. Suffice to say, bombs are not terribly efficient at converting mass to energy, and exploding bombs under your ship is an even more terribly inefficient way to power a spacecraft, even if you can solve the engineering problems of doing this, which, I might add, apparently never were solved. I didn't look at the others too closely yet, as none of them (fusion & antimatter) are likely to be developed in the near term. As for Robert Herndon's comments, yes, trying to make 86% of c would be real difficult, but that wasn't the question which was originally posed. The original question was whether we could do 10& of c. There's a huge difference in kinetic energy (KE) between the two, since, even just considering Newtonian kinematics, the KE runs as the square of the velocity. At 86& of c, relativity rears its ugly head, and at that speed, you're well up the Einsteinian asymptote of the KE vs velocity curve, which diverges at 1.0c. In contrast, 10% of c requires that only 0.5% of the spacecraft's launch rest mass be converted to spacecraft KE. That's within the order of magnitude of what's available from nuclear energy sources. Robert's numbers for the efficiency of converting mass to energy by nuclear power had the decimal point misplaced. The numbers are really 0.1% for nuclear fission, and I calculated 0.3% and 0.4% for two nuclear fusion reactions (The Li-6/D reaction used in nuclear weapons and He-3/D, a favorite reaction for advanced fusion concepts, respectively). As for Bussard ramjets, I'm very skeptical of being able engineer such a beast. Proton-proton fusion is an extremely slow, complicated reaction. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't slow. Compressing a plasma to achieve a nuclear fusion reaction isn't just a matter applying tremendous magnetic fields & pressures. We'd have had fusion long ago if that's all there was to it. There are all sorts of instabilities which come into play in that business which make life very difficult. All in all, to Bussard ramjets fans, I have to say, prove it's feasible, references required. Antimatter has a few problems, too, even if it does avoid the problem of fission & fusion neutron emission: The final reaction products of annihilating matter & antimatter are gamma rays, which won't power a spacecraft very well, either. Yes, I know that the immediate reaction products are pi mesons (pions), however, a fair number of those are neutral pions, which are nearly as useless as neutrons. Further, if my recollection of a recent (within this year) issue of _Science_ is correct, all of seven--count 'em,--seven atoms of neutral antihydrogen have been produced so far. They didn't stay around very long :-). This isn't a near-term possibility. I don't see the thousand AU project making the Voyagers completely redundant. First of all, that's not a project anyone is proposing to real soon. The Voyagers will continue their mission in the meantime. Yes, the thousand AU project could easily catch up with them in just a few years. Realistically, though, given current US federal budgetary pressures, and Dan Goldin's "faster, better, cheaper" direction, such a megaproject is not in the offing until the political climate changes. I too, will agree with Arthur C. Clark that it isn't right now worth trying to launch anything to another star. We probably would develop something several decades later which would catch up to it, making the earlier effort a completely redundant waste of money. Terry Colvin--do forward this to the space tech group. If anyone has the e-mail address for sending postings to that group, I'd appreciate it. My local newsserver doesn't recognize the group as moderated, thus I can't post to it through the server. Paul Keller ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #661 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". 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