5 replies to this topic

[UM-Bot]

Image credit: USAF

Tammy A. Branom: I recently read an article on MSN.com about a "new" hypersonic aircraft, the X-51A Waverider. As I perused the story on this remarkable aircraft able to fly at hypersonic speeds, I immediately had a flashback to reports of a government "black" project named Aurora.  With that, I started digging into all the information regarding Aurora and for the X-51A Waverider to see if the two were connected. I was not surprised to find many similarities.

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[glayvin34]

I'm not surprised that plasma is the main topic when studying hypersonic craft, any vehicle moving at that speed would have all kinds of issues being surrounded by a plasma sheath.  In effect the craft would be experiencing orbital reentry stresses at all times.  I read a paper by Korotkevich et al. from 2007 where some means of sending electronic communications through a plasma sheath is examined.  I'm not sure how much success they had, but here's the abstract:

Quote

We wish to transmit messages to and from a hypersonic vehicle around which a plasma sheath has formed. For long distance transmission, the signal carrying these messages must be necessarily low frequency, typically 2 GHz, to which the plasma sheath is opaque. The idea is to use the plasma properties to make the plasma sheath appear transparent.

Send me a private message if you'd like the whole paper, I have it in pdf.  I like their approach because, like the Waverider tech you described, they are using the plasma itself to acheive their goals.  Coupling the Korotkevich research with what you posted shows at minimum it's a public fact that humans have started to study craft that generate plasma enclosures with unique and changeable properties.  Very much like vimanas, or UFOs.
I follow ANYTHING plasma-related in the news since I'm a strong advocate of Plasma Cosmology and I think we are missing out on some very important plasma-based technologies.  But this Waverider craft seems quite in the realm of possibility for our current sciences, and is likely still a few decades from using plasma to create effects that violate the standard model of physics like UFOs are described to do.

[Babe Ruth]

I remember the controversy surrounding Aurora, but I thought it was a propulsion system, not necessarily an airframe?  Because there were quite a few reports of people seeing and hearing the pulsed thrust system, I had assumed that it was meant to operate in the atmosphere below 50,000 feet?

[curseofhe44]

Well, Babe Ruth, after looking in to more about the Aurora project than just what I had read in "conspiracy theory" sites, I feel Aurora began as a quest for a faster propulsion system using the Blackbird airframe.  However, as the project progressed, the Blackbird did not nor could not withstand the stresses, so another airframe, or a modified one, needed to be created.  Many reports of Aurora type aircraft are indeed flying above 50,000 feet and the Waverider is meant to go up to 90,000.

[Babe Ruth]

Thanks for that 44.  As I think back, I'm not certain that Aurora was the name of that propulsion system I mentioned.

It was out in Area 51 or thereabouts, and a fair number of people reported seeing and hearing it.  It seems like "pulsed" was used to describe it in general terms?

[Mantis914]

That sounds about right.  Way back in the early 90's or late 80's, I used to watch CNN when I couldn't go to sleep and around the wee hours of the morning, I saw a small clip of a news story about a ship called the Aurora.  There was even an illustration very similar to the one the OP has provided.  I seem to remember that it did have an X-something number attached to it then.  I caught almost the full story but it never came around from rotation.  I guess they pulled the story...   nice to see it come full circle now...     I just wish I would've had my VHS or Betamax ready then.  Geez, I'm getting old...