Is the Aurora spy plane retired or was it just a myth?

a reply to: Zaphod58

Is it not "Aurora" but probably an SR71 replacement to remove the predictability associated with satellites.

Engines are probably Aerospike Nozzles that resemble :


Frame probably looks like this:



Probably flies at Mach 6+???

IMHO Aurora was just a product of all the 1990s Area 51 hype. It became real in peoples minds because people wanted to believe it was real.

I don't doubt that some incredible aircraft were tested in that period, stuff that's still in the black. But I think the evidence would support the idea that Aurora as a name was never a black aircraft, and there was no production replacement for the blackbird.... at least not in the 1990s. Who knows whats guzzling JP7 these days :-D

I have not heard any distinctive double sonic booms in years.

The only craft that made these double sonic booms were the space shuttle, the SR71, and they claimed the Aurora.

For a time after the SR71 retired and there were no space shuttles returning we were still hearing these double sonic booms coming in over the calif coast and across the Calif and NV deserts

a reply to: Maxatoria

The wings were cut when they were put into museums. None of them can ever fly again.

a reply to: ANNED

Out of interest what causes a "double" sonic boom?

a reply to: gfad

All sonic booms are double booms. Once when the nose goes supersonic, and once when the air closes behind the aft fuselage. Usually they're so close together that you can only hear them with specialized equipment. Sometimes though you can clearly hear both. Shockwaves occur at various points around the aircraft as well as at the nose and tail.

I am not even going to join the fray in this thread regarding the "Aurora" But I do suggest for some answers the OP Re read some threads in the aviation forum.

a reply to: gfad

Just to make what Zaph said super technical, :

There is a rise in pressure at the nose, decreasing steadily to a negative pressure at the tail, followed by a sudden return to normal pressure after the object passes. This "overpressure profile" is known as an N-wave because of its shape. The "boom" is experienced when there is a sudden change in pressure, therefore an N-wave causes two booms - one, when the initial pressure-rise reaches an observer, and another when the pressure returns to normal. This leads to a distinctive "double boom" from a supersonic aircraft. When maneuvering, the pressure distribution changes into different forms, with a characteristic U-wave shape.

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Sammamishman

Sonic booms...pffft so passé.

One of (if not the only) thing Zaphod and I disagree on when it comes to aircraft.

I believe two evaluation test frames were built based on circumstantial evidence, and then pushed into operational service as "specials" when needed. No more than that though.

One, I believe crashed off Scotland on 26th October 1996 (the incident is discussed in UFO Scotland: The Secret History of Scotland's UFO Phenomenon - its classed as a UFO event, but I believe it was a top secret plane.)

The other was/is used sparingly - traceable by reports of skyquakes in California, and some radar tracks and other booms over the North Sea and Netherlands and - I believe - gets rolled out occasionally even now

originally posted by: neformore


The other was/is used sparingly - traceable by reports of skyquakes in California,

I personally felt these in early/mid 90's. Checked: it was not a shuttle landing.

MB,

It could have been a predecessor to the green lady making all that noise back then. Wonder why all the noise stopped.....

.....

a reply to: mbkennel

A non-Aurora platform may or may not have existed in limited numbers in that time frame, that would have been responsible for that.

Ah the "skyquakes"...Takes me back to being on the 2nd floor of a building at a certain Aircraft Company in the LAX area. Every Thursday morning for a period of time, the building would get a little jolt, and we'd all look at each other and smile...

a reply to: EBJet

Maybe it's more real than we think...

Oh it was/is real alright..That's why we all exchanged the knowing smiles when we felt the "skyquakes"....

a reply to: EBJet

If it was flying over LA every Thursday, regular as clockwork, shaking windows across the city how come no one ever spotted it or took a photo?

a reply to: gfad


High speed is very stealthy??

If you didn't know exactly where to look and you sat in your back yard with a 360 degree view of the sky, appropriate camera and waited lets say 8 hours ; what are the chances of capturing something at altitude that flies at over 4500 MPH?

Just out of interest- does anyone know how many pics of the SR71 were captured from the ground by people who weren't military/intelligence/working on a tip off before it's image was "officially" released?

Obviously you have to factor in camera tech advancement/cheaper cameras for the present but it would be interesting to see historic numbers/accounts of "black" aircraft actually photographed from the ground before they were "Officially" revealed.

Zaph what did you expect in term of new technology and leap in military Aerospace in 5/6 years, for your opinion ?

I think it's a safe bet that it' was the code name for the B2 when it was a black project. But I would not be surprised if the military did have a classified spy plane after the black bird.

As for what people were seeing well those could have been early test beds for the D.A.R.P.A falcon vehicles. The falcon vehicles like the HTV-2 & HTV-3 seem like a scaled down version of the aurora spy plane.

I still think there just wasn't enough money for a project like the aurora. The stealth bomber and lots of other black projects take a pretty big chunk of the governments black budget so to spend even more on another spy plane roughly the size of the aurora probably wasn't in the budget if they were working on or just finished the B-2 at the time.