Lockheed Classified Programs Timeline

a reply to: Zaphod58





oh oh oh i know what that is hook is attached to



awwwwww you guys already said it

a reply to: Barnalby

You are on the right track...

a reply to: EBJet

I imagine a Reagan-era "cost is no option" TSTO or atmosphere-skipper, something immensely capable and even more expensive that almost hit it's design objectives (and that the DC-X was likely a white world hedge against), before becoming a hangar queen. The X-37B is an attempt to get 75% of it's capabilities at a tiny fraction of the cost.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

The April Nat. Geo. arrived today and contains a three page spread about some costs of commercial flight. One area lists expense per item flown, over the course of one year on a 737-800: pack of peanuts - $2.00; magazine - $46.00; full bladder - $29.00. They did not mention olives, but a 1 lb. meal tray was $65.00 over a year, I'll let someone else figure out how many olives the salads may have had on it and do the math from that point...

...and this reply was a day late and so back off topic. My apologies, carry on.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Barnalby

Zaphs right. I read somewhere that a flight from Los Angeles to Hawaii uses something like $29,000 of fuel. That number could be waaaay off. But imagine cutting 25% of that cost of per flight each way. Airlines would probably sell their first born to get that. I mean look what they did to your in flight meals to save money. One company refused to put olives in their in flight salad to save money.

Well I know they claim that the KC-46 which is a 767 will burn between 8-10 thousand pounds of fuel an hour. A gallon of JP-8 fuel weighs on average 6.7 pounds depending on where you are, temp, all that nonsense. So 8000/6.7= 1194 gallons of fuel an hour. Not sure how much aviation fuel costs these days but lets just say at 2.50 a gallon your looking at 3000 bucks per hour of flight just on fuel alone. Flight time between LA and Hawaii is around 5 and a half hours so your looking at 16,500 bucks in fuel.

Now thats a 767 probably with older engines and stuff. And fuel at 2.50 (who knows how much it really is), so I would say that your estimate isnt that far off from the truth, depending on the jet flown and stuff.

a reply to: Barnalby
Why do you think that LM hates the Navy? I worked at LM for 26 years and was in the navy reserves program
for 8 of those years. LM never gave me any trouble about time off. And it was real nice to get pay from LM and
Navy both for my yearly 2 weeks active. I have been retired from LM for 5 years now.

a reply to: Zaphod58
When I was flying with the navy C9 squadron in the late 80/93. We used to say that if they ever put
tailhooks on C9s we'd never get enough people to man the squadron.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: nelloh62

He was interviewed during a show that went inside American Airlines operations. He was laughing the entire time he was telling the story, and thought he was a genius for doing this.

"And to think, the Board of Directors did the same thing and put a sociopath like me in charge! I just put a recording of me on the conference call! Ha ha!"

a reply to: Barnalby

Without addressing anything specific, not almost...Way beyond almost. Immensely successful and certainly never hangar queens by any measure. It still baffles me to this day how remarkably few hiccups there actually were on the road to getting stuff built, and realizing (even exceeding) the performance/mission goals. Still flying? Probably. Expensive? Yes indeed..Necessary? Absolutely. There was a reason why it was a collaboration, and not a competition.

No ties whatsoever to DC-X. Any comparison to X-37B is also invalid..

Projects are only as successful as the planning and management allow it to be..Knowing all the variables needed to fulfil the project is paramount.Problem with the newer tech is there a lot of "unknowns" that push budget and deadlines waaaay past their due..

originally posted by: EBJet
a reply to: Barnalby

Without addressing anything specific, not almost...Way beyond almost. Immensely successful and certainly never hangar queens by any measure. It still baffles me to this day how remarkably few hiccups there actually were on the road to getting stuff built, and realizing (even exceeding) the performance/mission goals. Still flying? Probably. Expensive? Yes indeed..Necessary? Absolutely. There was a reason why it was a collaboration, and not a competition.

No ties whatsoever to DC-X. Any comparison to X-37B is also invalid..

You think it'll be revealed in 30 years or so? Or will it be one of those that will just disappear....

originally posted by: EBJet
a reply to: Barnalby

Without addressing anything specific, not almost...Way beyond almost. Immensely successful and certainly never hangar queens by any measure. It still baffles me to this day how remarkably few hiccups there actually were on the road to getting stuff built, and realizing (even exceeding) the performance/mission goals. Still flying? Probably. Expensive? Yes indeed..Necessary? Absolutely. There was a reason why it was a collaboration, and not a competition.

No ties whatsoever to DC-X. Any comparison to X-37B is also invalid..

I can only wish I had a better idea of the "absolutely necessary" need that led to the creation of this system(s), I guess I'll just be stuck speculating with the rest of them.

At least I can sort of guess at how the collaboration between the various contractors might have gone down.

Boeing sure has some interesting patents from the era.

Patent # 4,802,639

a reply to: Northernhollow

That was my guess, a Boeing carrier aircraft, especially after they absorbed North American Rockwell who have always been the gods of making giant aircraft fly at absolutely insane speeds (see: The XB-70, the B-1A, the Space Shuttle, and that batsh*t insane 70's concept for an atmosphere-skipping hypersonic boost-glide airliner the size of an AN-225), launching some sort of Lockheed/Martin Marietta or McDonnell-Douglas-built spaceplane or atmosphere-skipping ISR vehicle.

Now I can see the reasoning behind both options, and that a single carrier aircraft might have been able to launch both "flavors" of vehicle, serving as a follow-on of sorts to the NB-52.

A spaceplane launchable from a mobile carrier aircraft would have netted the USAF 50% of the capabilities of the STS and the Vandenburg SLC-6 launch complex, at a likely fraction of the cost and with much, MUCH greater flexibility. Launching from a mobile aircraft also eliminates the need for the Shuttle's cross-range capability on a "one and done" 90-minute mission because you can now preposition the launch aircraft one orbital turn ahead of Edwards, Groom, or wherever you want to land your spaceplane. Just about the only things that the Shuttle could do that a smaller craft *couldn't* do are A: Launch an NRO payload, which was a moot point because the Titans, Atlas V's and Delta IV Heavy's did that better and cheaper, and B: Snatch an enemy's satellite from orbit and being it back to earth, which again would be a moot point unless you wanted to risk starting World War III. The key question would be whether or not you could cram enough delta-V into such a TSTO package that it could work, since even a carrier aircraft with an XB-70-like flight envelope would still leave what it launched with SSTO-like flight demands.

Likewise, a simple Sanger-type atmosphere-skipper or boost-glide vehicle, basically the good old McDonnell Douglass Rheinberry project, would finally achieve the design goals of the U-2 and A-12, by getting you an ISR platform that was utterly un-interceptable with anything short of a nuclear-tipped ABM system, that would also be able to fly anywhere and everywhere it pleased without violating international law, because it would stay above the Kármán line and wouldn't technically be an aircraft.

Now the two questions that I'm left with are
A: What role did Northrop play in this? Because typically they haven't been known for their space-capable hardware the way McD, L-M, Boeing, and North-American Rockwell were,
and
B: What geopolitical factors existed in the post-Soviet 1990's that would have justified the expense of such a program? Unless it was started in 1986 after the Challenger and like the ATF and the ATB, was allowed to finish development and reach an operational capacity even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

a reply to: Barnalby

That was my guess, a Boeing carrier aircraft, especially after they absorbed North American Rockwell who have always been the gods of making giant aircraft fly at absolutely insane speeds

...i always wonder where the third XB-70 under construction ended up

What geopolitical factors existed in the post-Soviet 1990's that would have justified the expense of such a program? Unless it was started in 1986 after the Challenger and like the ATF and the ATB, was allowed to finish development and reach an operational capacity even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Most likely, it was allowed to finish development as the ATF and ATB. Moreover, you don't plan to stay on par with your adversaries, present or future ones, you have to think ahead of them. A post cold-war world doesn't mean you can simply grow disinterested with what Russia, or China for example, are doing or may be doing in the future.

a reply to: Barnalby

Northrop brought their experience with lifting body aircraft such as the HL-10, M2F2, and M2F3, among other things..

a reply to: EBJet

I completely forgot about those, that's interesting in terms of giving away the possible direction of its planform evolution, compared to the X-24 family of Lockheed designs or the FDL-craft...

Especially details like the rounded bottoms of the Northrop craft compared to their flat-bottomed Lockheed brethren.

Hiding from being detected by OKO early warning system (both US-K and US-KMO satellites) is what is interesting. That must have been some clever engineering.

Can they build a bird of prey and constitution class already?

That would be nice. Also, battlestar, viper?

Thanks.

I love the skunkworks. They are freaking awesome.