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...broke out the pink chablis for nothing...
Originally posted by wonderworld
reply to post by Phage
So what you are saying you believe in chemtrails but the history channel is all bunk?
President Obama is full of surprises. But even expectant reporters were taken aback when White House science adviser John Holdren used his first interview on April 18, 2009 to announce, “Global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.”
With the first feedback effects from methane releases starting to kick in and our space colony's atmospheric CO2 levels surging toward the “Do Not Exceed” redline of 440 parts per million, Holdren declared that the Obama administration is considering “last resort” technologies to chill the global greenhouse village - aka the 'hood.
Is the Obama administration about to “out” chemtrails?
Referring to “radical” technologies that include spreading a sunlight-reflecting artificial cloud cover, Holdren declared, “It's got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.”
Invoking the image of a souped-up sedan careening toward an abyss in a fog of mass marketing exhortations for more speed, the White House science adviser suggested that reasonable passengers would stop arguing if there really was a cliff, how close and how big the drop long enough to urge applying some brakes - while chanting “Our lifestyle is sacred!” and keeping the carbon accelerator jammed to the floorboards.
Formed by ice literally at the boundary where the earth’s atmosphere meets space 50 miles up, they shine because they are so high that they remain lit by the sun even after our star is below the horizon.
EXOTIC PROPULSION AIRCRAFT
While the depiction of an Aurora aircraft seems consistent with the confines of present technological imagination, other SR-71 follow-on prognosticators suggest more alien craft. Aviation Week & Space Technology has proposed a current black aircraft that is something akin to a 1960s Sci-Fi concept. They depict an elongated diamond shaped vehicle (one hesitates to call it an aircraft) similar to a "flattened football." The airframe's dimensions might be 110 x 69 feet. Due to intense heat, the vehicle would have a heat-streaked appearance similar to that of the space shuttle. Contrary to intuition, the aft body would appear distinctly more pockmarked than the fore sections, as if the most intense heat was experienced in this region.
This vehicle would have a dual propulsion system. Jet engines buried in the fuselage would propel the vehicle to supersonic speeds, when a novel external burning mechanism would take control as the fundamental propulsion method:
"In the high Mach regime, misted fuel is ejected from the fuselage midsection -- the 'break point' of the elongated diamond -- across the aft surface tiles, into the area between the fuselage and a shock wave attacked to this break. In essence, the sloping, converging aft fuselage sections form the inside of a 'nozzle' and the shock boundary constitutes the outer surface, creating an expanding exhaust effect, much like that on a conventional rocket. The fuel is ignited by surface heating -- or other means -- creating combustion that accelerates the aircraft up to the Mach 6-8 regime."
Eliminating the human life-support requirements at Mach 8, this flaming, hypersonic pumpkin seed would be unmanned and capable of on-board self- control. This vehicle would be as destructive as it is unusual. A payload of 120- odd nuclear weapons would be dispensed as the flaming stone skipped across enemy skies.
The Public Record
The technical and trade press literature includes a number of references to exotic propulsion concepts that may find application in advanced military aircraft. These include pulsed detonation engines, external combustion engines, and waveriding aerodynamics.
Pulsed detonation engines, also referred to as pulsed detonation wave engines:
"... use a shock wave created in a detonation -- an explosion that propagates supersonically -- to compress a fuel-oxidizer mixture prior to combustion, similar to supersonic inlets that make use of external and internal shock wave for pressurization."
Although early experimental work was conducted on such propulsion concepts in the 1940s, a recent review noted:
"... there has been no previously reported use of PDE devices in any past or recent flight vehicle."
"External propulsion," like the "flaming pumpkin seed" mentioned previously, is another hypersonic propulsion technique currently being actively explored. During the 1950s and 1960s research began on exotic external-combustion propulsion systems. An aircraft would achieve hypersonic flight by pumping fuel from its midsection into a cone of air bounded by its shock wave. Interest in this technique continues.
"NASA said yesterday it wants to modify one of its three newly acquired SR-71A Blackbirds to prove the concept of burning hydrogen fuel outside an engine's exhaust nozzles to improve overall flight efficiency....explore a key propulsion concept for the X-30 National Aerospace Plane known as external burning....Engineers want to inject hydrogen fuel into the air stream under the NASP's engines and ignite it to increase pressure near the nozzles and reduce drag....and fly at speeds up to Mach 3."
Another exotic propulsion technique is "waveriding," in which a vehicle's shock wave remains attached to the leading edge of the aircraft's body in hypersonic flight. This makes it appear that the aircraft is riding its own shockwave. It has been reported that at least one aerospace corporation has developed and is marketing a concept for an unmanned hypersonic vehicle that is designed to operate at speeds around Mach 10 or higher.
External Combustion Pulse Detonation Engine Aircraft
Budget and Financial Data
The previous budget analysis pertaining to Aurora is also applicable to the Exotic Propulsion Aircraft. However, while the $1.5 billion appropriated for the Special Update Program is consistent with an effort to develop and test a single high-speed high-altitude aircraft, it is far from clear that this amount would support more than one such effort. It may also be questioned whether decision-makers would choose to carry more than one competing propulsion concept to the prototype flight stage of development.
Thus while budgetary considerations render plausible the existence of test prototypes of either Aurora or a more advanced Exotic Propulsion Aircraft, the simultaneous existence of both is much less plausible. Budget and financial data do not discriminate between the relative plausibility of these two classes of vehicles.
Observer Reports
Copyright © William Telzerow, photographed 11/10/2006
[For some critical commentary on the significance of unusual contrail sightings, see Chris Johnson's Partial Perspective Vortex.]
Nanotechnology also offers possibilities for creating simulated weather. A cloud, or several clouds, of microscopic computer particles, all communicating with each other and with a larger control system could provide tremendous capability. Interconnected, atmospherically buoyant, and having navigation capability in three dimensions, such clouds could be designed to have a wide-range of properties. They might exclusively block optical sensors or could adjust to become impermeable to other surveillance methods. They could also provide an atmospheric electrical potential difference, which otherwise might not exist, to achieve precisely aimed and timed lightning strikes. Even if power levels achieved were insufficient to be an effective strike weapon, the potential for psychological operations in many situations could be fantastic.
One major advantage of using simulated weather to achieve a desired effect is that unlike other approaches, it makes what are otherwise the results of deliberate actions appear to be the consequences of natural weather phenomena. In addition, it is potentially relatively inexpensive to do.
Q Tell us a little about the basics of cloud seeding.
A Clouds, whether in summer or winter, are not perfectly efficient at producing precipitation. There's some part of a storm that's much less than 100 percent efficient in turning clouds into precipitation. In winter, the problem is that there aren't sufficient ice crystals. If droplets fall in liquid form they generally evaporate. The idea is to add ice-forming particles.
Q Why silver iodide?
A One thing people discovered early on is that the structure is very similar to that of ice. The lattice structure at the molecular level is very, very close. We think that's why ice wants to bond to it.
Q When did scientists get serious about experimenting with cloud seeding?
A I think it was the day after they finished the experiments in the lab [chuckles]. The initial discoveries were in the 1940s, with substances like silver iodide. It was a short period before they started trying to affect larger systems, without much success.
Q Wasn't Kurt Vonnegut's brother one of the lead scientists in the 1940s?
A Yeah, Bernard Vonnegut.
[Editor's note: Bernard Vonnegut, the older brother of the late novelist Kurt, uncovered silver iodide's weather-modifying properties as a researcher for General Electric in 1946. He later taught atmospheric science at the State University of New York at Albany before passing away in 1997.] SA
Q What are your experiences with cloud seeding?
A My initial experiences were using cloud seeding to try to reduce hail fall. This was in northeast Colorado, where they don't get the massive hail people get in the Midwest, but they got it at a higher frequency. It turned into more of a research project into how hail and thunderstorms work. There was very little evidence that seeding was reducing hail, but we had some success later in increasing snowfall in the Sierra Nevadas, and more success in the mountains of Utah. We were able, in some instances, to monitor the chain of events, following the storms with aircraft. Now we're studying the actual snow for trace concentrations of the seeding material to see how effective the procedure was.
Q Plenty of scientists and organizations have tried to write off cloud seeding. Why does it keep coming back?
A It keeps coming back because of the demand for water, especially the dire straits of the arid Southwest. It's always been seen as a cheap way to add additional water.