Haven't seen that Blackstar recently?

Randy, you don't believe there was ever any operational Mothership/TSTO type system or high-speed successor to the SR-71?

The SR-71 was retired for a variety of practical and political reasons. Was that a good idea? Maybe not, but it happened. It does not necessarily follow that the Blackbird would then be replaced by another high-speed, high-altitude platform. At the time, a combination of satellites, subsonic high-altitude platforms, and UAVs were available to provide overhead reconnaissance coverage. The idea of a Blackstar-type vehicle was very appealing to fans of exotic aerospace vehicles but, nevertheless, appears to have been a fantasy.

And yet we still hear occasionally about the upcoming "SR-72" coming "soon" be it an unmanned, occasionally manned or fully manned platform. Why? Because it pays to pitch what the "customer" wants to hear and unfortunately the actual 'customer" in this case is Congress rather than the military. Probably the worst part about it all is then the MILITARY has to make noises on why the idea is a "good" one to help encourage Congress to spend at least SOME money on assets they actually need which quickly becomes a self-licking-ice-cream-cone :(

Mike Dornheim, the senior West Coast editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine thought the Blackstar article was crap. He told me it had so many flaws that he believed it should not have been published, but he had no choice in the matter. He elected not to try to fix any of those flaws so that knowledgeable people would spot them and, perhaps, provide appropriate feedback to the publisher.

"Though the magazine is ill," said Dornheim, "it may respond to outside assistance, which is often more effective than inside complaining."

Subsequently, several excellent rebuttal articles by Dwayne Day, Jeffrey Bell, and others, appeared online and elsewhere.

Dornheim added, "At the moment the powers-that-be think they have done a wonderful thing with the Blackstar story. Website traffic [quadrupled] and [Scott's article] is being discussed [online]."

AW&ST Executive Vice President and Publisher Ken Gazzola wrote to Bill Scott:
"Congratulations on your vintage AW&ST 'black program' cover story this week. This is a prime example among many which sets AW&ST far ahead of the rest."

Dornheim commented, "I worry that so encouraged, there may be more to come. Wiser views need to be brought in."

I agreed with Dornheim and worried that Scott's Blackstar article was a combination of yellow journalism and junk science.

It's nice to hear there was internal opposition however as you note it had internal support because it 'got views' which is unfortunately the way news cycles work these days.

With no documentation to back it up, it was no more than a collection of unverifiable anecdotes and rumors. Despite Scott's claim that "considerable evidence supports the existence of" the Blackstar system, he included no such evidence in his article. Although he admitted that "iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive," he claimed that a number of details about the project were hard facts.

Worse as the cited article shows he also keeps doubling-down on the same subject getting even wilder with even less evidence. And heartbreakingly the sources that are cited are taken uncritically with no proper background work. (I again shudder at the "Salt Lake City" reference... Yes it bothers me, how could you tell :) )

He described a two-stage to orbit (TSTO) system and asserted that "the spaceplane can reach low earth orbit," but he seemed to have no real understanding of orbital mechanics. It would have been nice to have had at least one rocket scientist review the article prior to publication.

I'm gonna point out that while the article is junk some (and only some and only if you squint in a certain context :) ) of the information works out. But it's presented as 'fact' with almost no context or supporting evidence.

Essentially what I'm pointing out is yes in fact you COULD have a TSTO "spaceplane" system capable of reaching orbit from a Mach 3 start. Systems like "Black Horse" have shown the math works even without some 'excotic' boron based propellant. (Frankly you can do it with peroxide and jet fuel, methane and LOX or even RP1 and LOX) But it needs to be done in a 'system' that was designed to work together from the start and not something that looks like fan-art and is described in a nonsensical word salad.

The fact that he uses so many 'technical terms' that actually exist but are not applicable the way he implies is physically painful.

The entire section on "adaptive optics with an integral sodium-ion-sensing laser" was not scientifically accurate. Such a system would be useful for ground-based telescopes, not the other way around.

Case in point :) It's meant for convincing the layman that because he said 'words' that actually exist he must therefore know what he's talking about. And the article is chock full of them.

Scott wrote, "Many sightings of both an XB-70-like carrier and a spaceplane have been reported." Without photographic proof those claims were, at best, just UFO reports. We have no meaningful way of knowing what, if anything, the alleged witnesses saw. Could you really keep "observed spaceplane landings" at Hurlburt Field, Kadena Air Base, and Holloman AFB a secret?

No, you couldn't and despite the "Red 3" alert that would only make the incident MORE known! We once had an SR-71 at Eglin AFB and the only reason anyone (generally) knew about it was because the base paper managed to get a photo of its tail. (On which had been written "Eglin AFB" and "EG" in aircraft soap.... The aircrafts "overnight" stay turned into a solid week of washes and several demotions and non-judicial punishments...)

The Blackstar system is allegedly so secret that top military space commanders apparently have never been "briefed-in" -- never told of the Blackstar's existence -- even though these are the warfighters who might need to employ a spaceplane in combat. So, what good is it?

You've seen "Spy's Like Us" haven't you :)

More seriously it's possible that such would not have an operational "need to know" but unlikely. More to the point in order to be any use it would have be 'operational' which in and of itself requires a pretty vast network of operations and maintenance activities that can't be easily hidden and would not be from those 'top commanders'.

If is was ONLY a test article and never actually deployed, (and the articles say differently) then it would not have been in wide use, would not have been 'deployed' in places around the world and would certainly not have been 'seen' as many times and places as claimed. Hence you have a direct conflict between it's "deep black" status and it's supposed operational nature.

Scott claimed an unnamed Pentagon official suggested that Blackstar was owned and operated by "a team of aerospace contractors" to provide government leaders with plausible deniability. They don't really need deniability if the system hasn't been publicly surfaced. They can simply respond to questions with a 'no comment.'"

Worse is that having the system operated by such a "team" would be a security nightmare since it would seem to be operated by that team AT and AROUND military bases (and over major population centers for some reason... still "Salty" about that one :) ) which would only increase the exposure.

Having a contractor-owned system certainly wouldn't give plausible deniability in the event that the vehicle's missions were exposed. If the missions of Blackstar included reconnaissance, satellite deployment, satellite retrieval or servicing, anti-satellite or space-to-ground weapons delivery, then government officials could hardly claim that a team of civilian contractors took such action on their own initiative.

Plausible deniability is why we have the alphabet soup of agencies involved in reconnaissance that we do. As for giving ACTUAL "plausible deniability" there isn't really any such thing. Whether operated directly by the government or a 'government contractor' the responsibility is the same.

Additionally, Scott's suggestion that Blackstar was developed to provide assured access to space in the wake of the Challenger and expendable vehicle failures of 1986/1987 flies in the face of logic. Why cobble together an unproven and likely hazardous vehicle configuration from 1960s-era technology (XB-70 and X-20 DynaSoar) rather than simply fix the relatively minor (by comparison) problems with the existing space launch fleet?

He also claimed it needed a "boron fuel" breakthrough which itself flies in the face of credibility. As you say the 'system' is essentially late 60s technology which while "known" is hardly something you can 'throw together' especially with a well known and understood to be not very useful "fuel" needing to be re-developed as well.

Randy
 
There is a Q clearance, it is a DOE clearance roughly equivalent to TS. The background investigation is the same as for TS, a Q clearance gives access to DOE Restricted Data.

That's actually where I looked it up, (due to the whole "Q" thing) and where I found it listed as the drug testing schedule not an actual clearance level. :)


From that link;
Q: "What clearance would I need?"
A: "You´ll need Q."
Q: "But I am a Q,."
A: "Indeed you are, but you have NONE."

The rest is history.
 
Except it literally does not because we haven't deployed such a system to replace the SR-71 and all such concepts proposed have not been pursued. Quite obviously the "high cost" (including design, testing, operations, infrastructure and maintenance costs as well as life-cycle and end-of-life costs) ARE a factor and one that has precluded the deployment of such a system.

Actually high-speed at high altitude is the opposite of 'stealth'. And if you're operating at the "edge of space" then it makes vastly more sense to actually be IN space rather than the atmosphere as the engineering and operational problems of high speed atmospheric flight, (including getting sensors to 'see' through those effects) is neither cheap nor easy.

As time goes on being able to access "real-time" data for reconnaissance is becoming cheaper and easier to do with unmanned, "low" speed systems rather than a manned, high altitude, high speed system and this trend has been ongoing since the mid-60s with no significant change in direction.

Randy

Well you're certainly entitled to your opinion Randy, thank you for sharing :)
 
Except it literally does not because we haven't deployed such a system to replace the SR-71 and all such concepts proposed have not been pursued. Quite obviously the "high cost" (including design, testing, operations, infrastructure and maintenance costs as well as life-cycle and end-of-life costs) ARE a factor and one that has precluded the deployment of such a system.

Actually high-speed at high altitude is the opposite of 'stealth'. And if you're operating at the "edge of space" then it makes vastly more sense to actually be IN space rather than the atmosphere as the engineering and operational problems of high speed atmospheric flight, (including getting sensors to 'see' through those effects) is neither cheap nor easy.

As time goes on being able to access "real-time" data for reconnaissance is becoming cheaper and easier to do with unmanned, "low" speed systems rather than a manned, high altitude, high speed system and this trend has been ongoing since the mid-60s with no significant change in direction.

Randy

Well you're certainly entitled to your opinion Randy, thank you for sharing :)
Randy is right and is not sharing an opinion.
 
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From NSF forum member Hoku:

https://www.governmentattic.org has placed a series of semi-annual histories of the Air / Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) online, covering the period June 1951 to June 1960.

In addition to details on ELINT receivers, recording and analysis equipment, and "Space Vehicle Data Research" (analysis of Sputnik III, Sputnik IV, and Lunik II transmissions are quoted as examples), the histories cover a variety of other intelligence areas and topics, as well as the "Unidentified Areal Phenomena Program" ;)

The histories also mention that more detailed ELINT/SIGINT reports were published in a series of ATIC Radiation Reviews. Attached are two histories covering July 1957 to June 1958, i.e. the period of the Sputnik 1 launch, and the reaction, which includes a new emphasis on Soviet space flight technologies.
 
From NSF forum member Hoku:

https://www.governmentattic.org …..the histories cover a variety of other intelligence areas and topics, as well as the "Unidentified Areal Phenomena Program" ;)
Those were probably U-2 contrail reports from propellor plane pilots.

As for Sputnik III, that was just the banishment of a Dalek that fell out of Party favor.
 
Randy, you don't believe there was ever any operational Mothership/TSTO type system or high-speed successor to the SR-71?
I'm on the fence with this one- on one hand you have Bill Sweetman's articles and the overtly detailed patent drawings and on the other hand we've no direct sightings, photographs or any other convincing credible evidence.
Yes- there is some hearsay but without any actual evidence it's worthless.
 
Ah, that ol hypersonic chestnut again? Yeah, I remember the Blackstar article (and the associated brouhaha) back in '06. Best sci-fi short story I read that year.
 
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Facts: DynaSoar had zero propulsive capability by itself. It needed an expendable Transtage in the back. Meanwhile the XB-70 flew no faster than Mach 3. Orbital velocity is Mach 22 (think ISS circling Earth) BUT going there with all the ascent losses takes Mach 27. That's the difference in Mach number between 7.8 km/s and 9.3 km/s.
Sooo, if you put a Dynasoar glider (with or without Transtage) on the back of a beefed up XB-70, I can guarantee it won't go to orbit... by a long shot !
Put otherwise: if you drop a rocket stage at Mach 3, with 30 degree AoA, and from 50 000 ft (no point in going higher, it doesn't saves anything) then you remove 2000 m/s out of 9000 - something.
Still, you need one hell of a big rocket stage to deliver that 10 000 pound DynaSoar glider across 7000 m/s and to orbit - from the back of that XB-70 wannabee mothership.
Plus dropping a big rocket from the turbulent thermal nightmare of Mach 3 is dangerous business, to say the least. Just ask the M-21 with the D-21 drone on its bakc - it didn't ended too well...

Rocketplanes make loosy stage 2 because of all that dead weight they carry around the basic rocket cylinder-with-an-engine-bell: wings, cockpit, tail, undercarriage, some flyback turbojets...

Takes Titan 2 stage 2. It may have the all time propellant mass fraction record - 0.96; once you start wrapping a spaceplane around it, PMF drops to 0.90 or 0.85... or worse. Every single percent lost amounts to 400 m/s of delta-v going by the window. Within the blink of an eye that rocketplane max delta-v collapses from from 9000 to 6000 m/s. And you can kiss orbit goodbye...
The rocket equation is an exponential, very unforgiving.... [insert "female dog" very rude word HERE]
 
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Facts: DynaSoar had zero propulsive capability by itself. It needed an expendable Transtage in the back. Meanwhile the XB-70 flew no faster than Mach 3. Orbital velocity is Mach 22 (think ISS circling Earth) BUT going there with all the ascent losses takes Mach 27. That's the difference in Mach number between 7.8 km/s and 9.3 km/s.
Sooo, if you put a Dynasoar glider (with or without Transtage) on the back of a beefed up XB-70, I can guarantee it won't go to orbit... by a long shot !
Put otherwise: if you drop a rocket stage at Mach 3, with 30 degree AoA, and from 50 000 ft (no point in going higher, it doesn't saves anything) then you remove 2000 m/s out of 9000 - something.
Still, you need one hell of a big rocket stage to deliver that 10 000 pound DynaSoar glider across 7000 m/s and to orbit - from the back of that XB-70 wannabee mothership.
Plus dropping a big rocket from the turbulent thermal nightmare of Mach 3 is dangerous business, to say the least. Just ask the M-21 with the D-21 drone on its bakc - it didn't ended too well...

Rocketplanes make loosy stage 2 because of all that dead weight they carry around the basic rocket cylinder-with-an-engine-bell: wings, cockpit, tail, undercarriage, some flyback turbojets...

Takes Titan 2 stage 2. It may have the all time propellant mass fraction record - 0.96; once you start wrapping a spaceplane around it, PMF drops to 0.90 or 0.85... or worse. Every single percent lost amounts to 400 m/s of delta-v going by the window. Within the blink of an eye that rocketplane max delta-v collapses from from 9000 to 6000 m/s. And you can kiss orbit goodbye...
The rocket equation is an exponential, very unforgiving.... [insert "female dog" very rude word HERE]
That's why Saturn IB should have been Dyna-Soar's ride :p
 
That's why Saturn IB should have been Dyna-Soar's ride :p
No, and it was the right decision
a. Saturn IB was too expensive
b. There was no west coast capability
c. There was no reason for Marshall to be the nation's launch vehicle developer
d. Finally, the Titan IIIC was selected over a year before the Saturn IB existed.
 
That's why Saturn IB should have been Dyna-Soar's ride :p

It still would have needed a trans-stage and not really been any more 'better' than the Titan IIIC

That's why Saturn IB should have been Dyna-Soar's ride :p
No, and it was the right decision

Agree but.... :)

a. Saturn IB was too expensive

Questionable as the Saturn 1B flight rate was never as high as the Titan IIIC which would have made a difference

b. There was no west coast capability

True but again questionable because the ability was still there if they'd wanted. (Note that the Air Force very much didn't want to but then again there's the Air Force SLS :) )

c. There was no reason for Marshall to be the nation's launch vehicle developer

If Marshall had a choice in the matter? :)

d. Finally, the Titan IIIC was selected over a year before the Saturn IB existed.

And Titan IIIC had about a year of operation before Saturn 1B flew but in 'context' the initial idea was to use the plain-jane Saturn 1 for Dynasoar to the point they put fins on the Saturn 1 to 'counter' the wing area of the Dynasoar (SA-105) and then had to cut them down.

Randy
 
Nitpick: It was SA-5, not SA-105. It was not until Saturns began launching boilerplate Apollo hardware that AS-numbers (A-numbers in some older reports) were assigned. SA-6 was the first Saturn used for an AS-mission, namely AS-101.
 
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a. Saturn IB was too expensive

Questionable as the Saturn 1B flight rate was never as high as the Titan IIIC which would have made a difference

b. There was no west coast capability

True but again questionable because the ability was still there if they'd wanted. (Note that the Air Force very much didn't want to but then again there's the Air Force SLS :) )

No not questionable, even at Titan IIIC flight rates it would be too expensive. It even lost out to Titan IIIE later in the 60's
What Air Force SLS?
 
This exchange has in my humble opinion pretty much strayed extremely far afield from what was in my understanding originally supposed to be a discussion of a potential HTHL TSTO LEO RLV concept. Please, let's focus on the original intent, ladies (?) and gentlemen.
 
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Note also that the existence of the F-117 and B-2 was not completely secret -- Northrop even put out a press release noting that it had been selected as the prime for the ATB, and there was a cottage industry that grew up around speculation about their funding methods, configuration, and capabilities, in magazines, books, and other media of the day.
Yes, Pres. Carter had announced the existence of the program during his re-election campaign to prove that he was not "soft on defense".

So while it was known that an Advanced Technology Bomber program existed, that was about all that was really known for a long time.


I'd have to really wonder WHY a project that supposedly failed, (which is why it was supposed to have been shelved) was going to still be highly classified. More so since it no longer flying at all. (Supposedly :)
My guess would be that some things that were developed in the "failed" program were still in use in other, still-classified programs. Like the 2.4m diameter mirrors used in all the old spy satellites, Hubble, and those NRO donations to NASA that are not allowed to be pointed at Earth.


IIRC, the claim was that the craft used a gel propellant. The only good reason for gelled propellant, so far as I'm aware, is because you are using a finely powdered solid propellant in a liquid suspension. Gelled metal fuel could be quite dense, certainyl so compared to hydrogen. The Isp of some metallic fuels, especially if you use somethign exciting like FLOX for the oxidizer, can be quite impressive... Some, theoretically over 500 seconds (at least one is around 600 seconds, IIRC). So dense fuel, dense oxidizer and high Isp *could* result in an SSTO the size of a fighter plane.

Of course, these propellants have *lots* of problems, which have precluded their being actually used. Metal fuels, for instance, have a tendency to plate the throat and nozzle of the rocket engine, resulting in BOOOOOM. And pumping *grit* is rarely a recipe for success.
You need insanely fine powder at that point. Nano particles, to use the term in the technical sense.



You think this is bad in the US try the British Royal Family. There was a podcast link below, talking about Queen Victoria’s extensive intelligence network and they were saying virtually nothing of this has ever been declassified by the Windsor Castle archives and much of that is well over 150 years old.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/queen-victorias-spy-network/
And in general the Brits have a 3 generation rule for declassifying things. 3 generations after it happened, so that it's a case of "my Great-Grandfather did what in WW2?"


I once had a discussion about 20 years ago with an old engineer, and we were talking about USN technologies, beginning with the firing solution, computer-controlled (analog mind you) battleship guns that could fire quite accurately, to the tech that allowed submarines to avoid running into sea mounts in the pitch-black of the deep sea. "You know Pete," he told me, "the US Navy has technologies that are usually 25 to 40 years ahead of the commercialized tech you see in public use."
:D :D :D :D :D

Hah! The stuff on an Ohio-class sub was generally about 1975 technology, with occasional pieces of smarter things. My personal favorite was the CAMS2 atmosphere monitoring gear, which was less than a decade old in 2001. Fully automatic mass spectroscope, with automatic data logging as well. just about everything else was just out of vacuum tubes...

As to dodging seamounts? That's called charts created via side-scan sonar, and a stopwatch, plus a briefing of the planned channel course we're going to run. "Okay, plan is 30 seconds on course X, hard turn to course Y, 2 minutes on Course Y, ..."

Even then, every one of the patrols I went on had us finding another previously-undetected seamount in scary deep water, 3000+fathoms to the bottom. Every one of the enlisted navigation types had a seamount named for them.
 

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And in general the Brits have a 3 generation rule for declassifying things. 3 generations after it happened, so that it's a case of "my Great-Grandfather did what in WW2?"
Christopher Lee (yes, him), when asked by an interviewer about what he'd done in the SOE during WWII, leaned close and asked, 'Can you keep a secret?' 'Yes', said the interviewer. Lee leaned back and smirked. 'So can I', he said.
 
Christopher Lee (yes, him), when asked by an interviewer about what he'd done in the SOE during WWII, leaned close and asked, 'Can you keep a secret?' 'Yes', said the interviewer. Lee leaned back and smirked. 'So can I', he said.
Yup. Still classified while anyone involved with the actions is alive, and while their children are alive.

If you're lucky, the grandkids get to hear about it after the decision makers and actors are gone.
 
Christopher Lee (yes, him), when asked by an interviewer about what he'd done in the SOE during WWII, leaned close and asked, 'Can you keep a secret?' 'Yes', said the interviewer. Lee leaned back and smirked. 'So can I', he said.

There's some reason to suspect that Lee may have embellished his wartime experience a bit. Like, he claims to have been assigned to units that have no record of him, when other unit members are known.

 
The article that I remember from Aviation Week (I wish I could at least remember the year) was all programmatics, nothing on the technical aspects, like the facets. But it had a lot of the basics, like when the program was started, the fact that they had built a demonstrator, the crash, etc. It was clear that somebody in the Pentagon had told them the overall program history.

I remember looking that up after I did my fisking of the Blackstar article, because it struck me as an example of Aviation Week doing really good journalism vs. what I think happened with Blackstar. In the case of the stealth fighter, at least in that article, they had a SOURCE, they weren't speculating based upon eyewitness testimony and things like that. It was an example of them being careful and diligent.

Among the many problems with the Blackstar story was that some of it just didn't stand up to scrutiny, like doing some of the testing at an airfield that was not remote and typically used for classified aircraft testing.
The oldest AW I could find about a "Blackstar" model (that name is from 2006?); here 1992 AW article. Back then, it was linked to assumptions about Aurora project.

Capture d’écran 2024-03-18 à 19.48.30.png Capture d’écran 2024-03-18 à 19.49.05.png
 
The oldest AW I could find about a "Blackstar" model (that name is from 2006?); here 1992 AW article. Back then, it was linked to assumptions about Aurora project.

The first use of the "Blackstar" name was in a October 2003 Popular Communications column by Steve Douglass:


It was, however, in reference to the reports of an aircraft flying above U-2 pilots in Iraq and was a low-speed UAV.
 
The first use of the "Blackstar" name was in a October 2003 Popular Communications column by Steve Douglass:


It was, however, in reference to the reports of an aircraft flying above U-2 pilots in Iraq and was a low-speed UAV.
That name was then given to a two-stage-to orbit system by Aviation Week in a March 2006 William B.Scott’s article. According to it, the system had already been shelved.
 
"Brilliant Buzzard" was supposed to be the name.

The Andrews GRYPHON was to be similar, visually.
 
I admit that at first I believed the blackstar/brilliant buzzard story..... but over time I realized that it was junk journalism or inventions to attract attention.
All those sightings from the 90s could be inventions or misidentified aircraft.
 
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Whatever the name, real or fake?

Mike Dornheim, the senior West Coast editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine thought the Blackstar article was crap. He told me it had so many flaws that he believed it should never have been published, but he had no choice in the matter. He elected not to try to fix any of those flaws so that knowledgeable people would spot them and, perhaps, provide appropriate feedback to the publisher.

"Though the magazine is ill," said Dornheim, "it may respond to outside assistance, which is often more effective than inside complaining."

Subsequently, several excellent rebuttal articles by Dwayne Day, Jeffrey Bell, and others, appeared online and elsewhere.

Dornheim added, "At the moment the powers-that-be think they have done a wonderful thing with the Blackstar story. Website traffic [quadrupled] and [Scott's article] is being discussed [online]."

AW&ST Executive Vice President and Publisher Ken Gazzola wrote to Bill Scott:
"Congratulations on your vintage AW&ST 'black program' cover story this week. This is a prime example among many which sets AW&ST far ahead of the rest."

Dornheim commented, "I worry that so encouraged, there may be more to come. Wiser views need to be brought in."

I agreed with Dornheim and worried that Scott's Blackstar article was a combination of yellow journalism and junk science.

With no documentation to back it up, it was no more than a collection of unverifiable anecdotes and rumors. Despite Scott's claim that "considerable evidence supports the existence of" the Blackstar system, he included no such evidence in his article. Although he admitted that "iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive," he claimed that a number of details about the project were hard facts but offered no proof.
 
So if you want to have some fun, go back to the beginning of this thread and start skimming it from there. Make sure to read the dates.

This thread started in 2009. The Blackstar article appeared in 2006. That was 18 years ago, the thread started 15 years ago. Where's the evidence in those 18 years? Nothing. Now think about what that means, and think about how you can apply that example to other claims and stories. It helps to develop skeptical reading and evaluation skills.

There were a lot of things that bugged me about the original Blackstar article, but one of them was that I thought that the author should have called up an aerospace engineering professor at a big school like Purdue or MIT and asked him to do some of the basic math. Assume a plane the size of a B-70. How big an aircraft could it carry on its back (or underneath)? And how much fuel could that spaceplane carry? What would be the maximum performance it could achieve to orbit? I'm sure that a smart aerospace engineer could figure out the ballpark performance, and I'm sure that it would have been unimpressive.
 

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