Weird California sighting

Hello all. Very interesting thread.

I have always been intrigued by the fact that lighter than air vehicles have some obvious advantages to conventional airframes when it comes to such things as fuel spenditure and VTOL.

I realise this thread is about a special airframe, but seeing as the use of lighter than air materials (I believe vaacum cells) have come up in this thread already, I was wondering how people feel about this as technology in various airframes discussed here.

I guess it even if it was not true ligter than air, even near neutral buoyancy at some atmospheric level or other would be a good thing, if only for fuel economy and endurance? And variable buoyancy if possible? I imagine this would be great for a surveillance platform that needed to hover in place for longer periods of time, or even communication / signalling.

If I, as a planner or intelligence operative (which I'm not by the way), could have a surveillance platform that could stay in theatre for extended time periods, and also move/evade if detected and even do - well really anything if we are talking about a true lighter than air platform like that, I would certainly say "thank you very much".

Any thoughts on that?

Anyway, a very nice thread which I have been following for a good while now.

BT

a reply to: beetee

Youre welcome.

Going back a bit here buuut.
Floating to Space

a reply to: Blackfinger

Very interesting. I always thought the space elevator concept was worthwhile, if not easily achievable, but if they can get this right it certainly will bring the cost down with regards to placing things in orbit.

I guess if a civilian volunteer organisation can do it the military can as well, if they so desire.

Thank you for the link.

BT

a reply to: beetee

Notice what JP Aerospace does sure seems to resemble what people were seeing during the Hudson Valley UFO Flap in NY and the first incident during the Phoenix Lights sightings.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

Yes, and I must say my eyebrows rose ever so slightly over the dimensions inherent in their concept with regards to the atmospheric "Dark Sky Station". Omnious name, by the way. 3 km across, thats no small thing to have up there.

But, of course, the best would be a craft that could do the whole Earth to Orbit transition without any need for a waystation.

It seems that graphene has some interesting derivatives, and I bet there are even more exotic materials also tucked away. So if you are basically weightless, and fuel consumption is mainly for station keeping and to counteract weather, I guess you would not need to refuel that often. And, if the power is indeed nuclear, well... then you could just stay up there, as a well hidden base of operations for all sorts of things. And if you could hide it in space?

I find it a little interesting that "oily black" seems to pop up in quite a few of the descriptions I have read of the smaller triangles. I don't know where optical stealth has gotten to, but I read about this canadian firm that claimed to have it nailed down and even claimed to have demonstrated it for the US millitary, but then the project was cancelled. Could be that it didn't work well enough, or even at all, but it could also be that it was never cancelled. Or maybe they had something better already.


BT

a reply to: beetee

Sometimes things are "Cancelled" not cancelled.

I'd bet your right about a bunch of the stuff in your above post.

a reply to: beetee

The Black doritos CAN go from ocean to space in one go without a way station.

Possibly military as looking at their page on Fb they are working on the scale model Dark Sky and the smaller Ascender at moment.

a reply to: yuppa

Yeah but are the 6000 feet long and have the same lifting capacity.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: yuppa

Yeah but are the 6000 feet long and have the same lifting capacity.

Oh you mean the big boys. Im guessing since they are scaled up they might but i d only heard of them having 3 of those only. the rest are smaller craft and the cloaked station in polar orbit if i remember.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

Well, we know that radar stealth is quite advanced. But I hadn't realised that thermal stealth was as advanced as "Adaptiv" from BAE. And this is 2011.

If you look at the Adaptiv wikipedia article there is a APC pretending to be a large car in a thermal image. Nifty.

So, what if you could do this with light? That would be useful.

"Look, a black tr... nah, it's just ... swamp gas. How silly of me...." ;-)

BT

a reply to: beetee

they're working in something even more crazy and ambitious than that when it comes to optical stealth. you won't even know you just saw something.

a reply to: yuppa

I don't see the problem just so long as the lights come in groups of three. that's very important. without it I'd imagine you get a craft that spins in place and is wonky.

While searching for more info on the state of optical stealth, and other stealth technologies, I came across this little gem. I don't know if this has been pulled up on here before, but it is a massive 243 page compilation about stealth technology, mainly with regards to satellites. And also a neat little chapter on "bureaucratic stealth". A brilliant term, I thought.

It's a pdf hosted by the Federation of American Scientists website.
Stealth

A great read for anyone wanting to get a feel for the historical background around black/covert space operations. As well as the possibilities out there. A lot of strange things, like disappearing satellites. Also a lot of coverage on the strategic rationale behind such capabilities.

I certainly enjoyed it. There are some gems in there :-)

Like this little diamond:

I'll even add an extreme dark horse under the Something Else category just to please the Area 51 fans: - The US has developed a covert launch vehicle (Pegasus-like, Aurora-esque, who knows) capable of putting a deceptive (signature-controlled, replacement for an existing object, whatever) smallish satellite with 30 to 50 cm optics into LEO. There are well-populated bands in the 800 - 1300 km region where such a thing might hide. This would be neat, and very useful in time of war, but I doubt that it's true.

BT

originally posted by: yuppa

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: yuppa

Yeah but are the 6000 feet long and have the same lifting capacity.

Oh you mean the big boys. Im guessing since they are scaled up they might but i d only heard of them having 3 of those only. the rest are smaller craft and the cloaked station in polar orbit if i remember.

OK, so there are 3 x 6000ft aircraft flying from Earth into space, X-37 must be a psyop, as must Space-X, the ISS, the B-2, B-21, P-791....

I dont buy any of that. Conventional propulsion pushing the limits is Advent or other fossil burning engines, even the "green lady" if it exists seems to be powered by a boron fuel and with the turning described would appear to be working within the laws of standard aircraft aerodynamics to prevent anything more than a 9g turn (or similar) at high speed.

I love aviation and I love this forum, but I dont see how on one hand the navy are juggling for a carrier launched air to air refueller (sensible) and yet the same country is putting 6000ft long aircraft in invisible orbits over the poles.

Thats my 2 cents.

Interesting read.
i.imgur.com...

Source

"stop talking about Joint warfighting space/near space dammit!"

According to the reddit comments; the guy getting chewed out was involved in something to do with LTA vehicles.


I am 50/50 on whether there is some sort of top secret, mature LTA technology that exists as part of someones inventory or whether LTA technology is just too unconventional for Military procurers meaning it doesn't get the spend.

It could also just be that a "LTA" craft with it's own LENR reactors would be (ultimately) less profitable for the industry when HTA craft already do fantastic numbers.

a reply to: Zaphod58


I find this an interesting thread, much talk about a super fast set of lights...and it was just lights!


I wonder how far this sighting of an exotic craft would have gotten into this public media if the observer had also added, "...And it was of a huge triangular shape..."? Or worse yet, "it was moving too slow, low and silently to be a typical aircraft"?

a reply to: Jukiodone

hey juki can you post the reddit link. your links provided currently go to the order and judgement and exhibit a.

a reply to: Jukiodone

I agree that the military does tend to do things a certain way, but there is also a strong will to "boldly go where no military has ever gone before" if you look at research and development.

As for the viability of LTA platforms, the advent of very strong and super light materials have drastically changed the major obstacle that has stood in the way of LTA using vaacum, for instance.

Although I have to agree that HTA airframes do marvellous things, they always have to spend a lot of their power an energy, and fuel, on staying aloft. With a true LTA platform, all this energy expenditure could be directed at forward thrust and maneuvrability. A silent, fast and very maneuvrable platform that has all the advantages of a helicopter but none of the drawbacks. Effortless vertical hover, just thrust for station keeping? It can even go backwards or sideways. Sounds like a good idea to me.

I think the possible advantages just in range, endurance and payload capability must make any such platform at least theoretically very interesting at least at an advanced research and development level. And if you could use all your power for speed and maneuvrability, effortlessly hover, VTOL almost anywhere? Couple that with what it might do for cheaper and stealthy access to orbit and space, and maybe it doesn't seem so far fetched at all that this would at least be pursued.

I think we might get to see this very soon in civil aviation too, when the technology is mature enough and production cost are low enough. Who would want to weigh down an aircraft with aluminium and other HTA components if there was an alternative with inisignificant or even just lower weight penalties? Say the world "fuel savings" and I guess a lot of aircraft operators would drool ever so slightly. Now if you could truly build a fast, versatile, safe LTA airframe, it would revolutionise the whole aviation field.

And what would happen to space exploration if you had a reusable launch vehicle that could do the whole ground to orbit and beyond in one fell swoop?

I think if they have built this, it is going to trickle down into the civilian sector, or at least the technologies will. Or the civilian sector will do it on their own, and some military forces will at least be ready for the space boom that surely will come in short order. It will be like the Wild West, or the God Rush, and perhaps already being there when the boom happens isn't such a bad strategic idea. But the politics of it is, of course, a horrible quagmire.

Perhaps even such a quagmire that it is better to keep things secret for now and wait for the rest of the world to catch up. And when the world starts to panic because all sorts of entities and organisations and individuals are rushing for the profits of space, you can say to the UN: "Well, it happens that we have been developing some capacities...."

Hehe... The possibilities really are endless... ;-)

BT