For 16 years, Aviation Week & Space Technology says, it has been investigating a hush-hush Pentagon program to put a “small military spaceplane in orbit. Considerable evidence supports the existence of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted that it’s ‘out there,’ but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this innovative ‘Blackstar’ system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we’ve learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into ‘black world’ history, known to only a few insiders.”
After the shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986, and a subsequent string of expendable-booster failures, Pentagon leaders were stunned to learn they no longer had “assured access to space.” Suddenly, the U.S. needed a means to orbit satellites necessary to keep tabs on its Cold War adversaries.
The answer: a high-flying, hypersonic jet that would launch a small orbiter into space.
A large “mothership,” closely resembling the U.S. Air Force’s historic XB-70 supersonic bomber, carries the orbital component conformally under its fuselage, accelerating to supersonic speeds at high altitude before dropping the spaceplane. The orbiter’s engines fire and boost the vehicle into space. If mission requirements dictate, the spaceplane can either reach low Earth orbit or remain suborbital.
The manned orbiter’s primary military advantage would be surprise overflight. There would be no forewarning of its presence, prior to the first orbit, allowing ground targets to be imaged before they could be hidden. In contrast, satellite orbits are predictable enough that activities having intelligence value can be scheduled to avoid overflights…
Once a Blackstar orbiter reenters the atmosphere, it can land horizontally at almost any location having a sufficiently long runway. So far, observed spaceplane landings have been reported at Hurlburt AFB, Fla.; Kadena AB, Okinawa; and Holloman AFB, N.M.
The spaceplane is capable of carrying an advanced imaging suite that features 1-meter-aperture adaptive optics with an integral sodium-ion-sensing laser. By compensating in real-time for atmospheric turbulence-caused aberrations sensed by the laser, the system is capable of acquiring very detailed images of ground targets or in-space objects, according to industry officials familiar with the package.
One anonymous tipster asks, “Is it possible to design, build and operate such a complex and expensive system and still keep it secret for so long?“
UPDATE 03/06/06 10:15 AM: “Aerospace experts [are] question[ing] a number of claims made for the Blackstar concept,” MSNBC’s Jim Oberg reports.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources told MSNBC.com that they believed the concept was unworkable, based on principles of rocket design. One source said the mothership would be flying much too slow and too low for a space plane to reach orbital speed after release. When the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency sought proposals for an unmanned RASCAL satellite launcher five years ago, the specifications called for the carrier aircraft to go much higher, and the submitted designs still needed two stages to reach orbital speed.
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>One anonymous tipster asks, “Is it possible to design,
>build and operate such a complex and expensive system and still keep it secret for so long?“
Nope, not with Pentagon officials having a bad habbit unable to keep and zip their mouth shut, tipping to Noah Shachtman and others about sensitive military information so often.
They make this sound like it’s a DIFFERENT aircraft than aurora.
On the contrary, I think it’d be quite easy to keep such a project relatively quiet, as long as it doesn’t reach a certain stage. If it’s well-funded but not extravagant, there’s no need to advertise. The people working on the project won’t talk.
Reporters and the like aren’t exactly watching where academic experts and particular types of engineers are going. Sure, rumors will float inside the classified community (which reporters may hear), but those are rumors — and more than one rumor has been started by somebody who read too much science fiction and wanted to mess with somebody’s head. At least, until the project comes near to fruition, needs a budget upgrade, or runs into trouble, at which point the number of people who need to be briefed in grows by quite a bit.
It was quite a few years before people believed we had a stealth plane, and that was a humongous investment. Even then, a lot of what was going around was sheer speculation, and not that much removed from talk of Area 51, aliens, and flying saucers.
It sounds to me like the craft they are talking about is the SR-75, is has many names like Penatrator, Brilliant Buzzard, and Mothership. Which was the successor to the XB-70.
The craft the was attached to the SR-75 was the SR-74 Scramp. (much like how the SR-71 is with the D-21).
But its good to here some more info coming out about this.
Im with Murc on this one. Sounds like SR-71s little buddy attachment.
The best place to keep a secret is in plain site with false understated capabilities.
Can the gov keep a lid on such a project? Tip of the ice burg did you notice they said that they have been researching these rumors for 16yrs. There is a 20yr or so disclosure release curve on mill tech.
I still believe todays UFOs are just tomorrows front line forces. The stealth halve blue was first flown in the late 60s and we had operational entire air wings pre-public disclosure.
A lot of the details soudns pretty dubious, particularly the exotic Boron-based fuel (I believe this was researched previously, without success largely due to environmental concerns), as well as the fundamental structural problems of a craft similar to the XB-70 reaching speed and altitude with such a substantial payload.
Well let’s see here:
1)It’s Big
2)Expensive
3)On the verge of useless/inefficient
Yep the Pentagon would have it…
On a side note from what I have heard out of Northrop Grumman, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a hand in this.
I’m thinking Black Horse/Black Colt = Black Star system. Yeah, I know the Black Horse/Colt aircraft were described as SSTO in nature, but I have a feeling that was disinfo.
AFAIK Black Horse/Black Colt were Mitchell Burnside Clapp’s ideas for a system of similar capability but operating by in-flight refuelling of the oxidizer after takeoff.
He seems to have been serious about wanting to build one way back when…
I know if I say “airship”…that the first thought to come to mind is “blimp”. This instead: a very large, RIGID, framed in carbon fiber Lighter-than-Air craft.…can indeed reach extremely high altitude, just as stratospheric weather balloons are able to.…the only hinderment really is payload. So, launch Pegasus-like from this “mothership”.…orbit on demand, more or less.
When DARPA Walrus was first being touted, wording in the solicitation indicated that Pentagon was interested in development of “electrokinetic propulsion” for the airship. Doable, if the craft is big enough for unusual power source. (Like the “Aurora” slip of years back…this wording has been deleted from later writings from DARPA related to Walrus.)
NIDS has postulated on this possible craft. While a lot of that may be dismissed as typical “UFO” hype.….so was stealth technology some years ago.
I vote for this airship. Why? because it is relatively simple, has built in “UFO” deniability, and because it allows the first stage of an orbit on demand system to be somewhat passive.…let the actual missile/launch vehicle be the one with the most bugs to work out.…
Just a thought.…
I actually don’t see why this is such an exotic idea. It’s already been recently done on a smaller scale, and in the privately funded civilian world at that.…..think Spaceship One (remember the winner of the X-prize).
Hello, I’m a habitual reader of DefenseTech from Spain and first of all I want to congratulate you for your excellent job. Well, I write you beacause of the recent issue of the Blackstar and the whole lot of reactions it has provoked. I want to send you the direction of a web page you might found interesting (many critics have been directed towards the hypothetical propulsion system of blackstar and the gel-like boron fuel, and this page shows a possible alternative for a two-stage-to-orbit vehicle).The direction is http://www.andrews-space.com/content-main.php?subsection=MTA5 Thanks for your attention.
There is buzz floating around that the US has top secret orbital bases (more than one) and black space planes fly to and from them regularly. Of course, UFO believers and unreliable sources perpetuate such
rumors, which would be great for deniability issues.
Is it impossible for such hugely expensive black projects to exist? Probably, but.…
Does the name Millenium Twain mean anything to anyone? He is probably spreading these rumors to bring web attention to himself and his own “out there” pet projects.
But, with the recent sightings of black silent triangles flying over Texas by dozens of eyewitnesses and the Air Forces tardy public explanations, who really knows what highly advanced top secret “toys” we have, right now?
Besides, a slow silent dark craft could just be a blimp with electric fans to move and steer with, and primarily be a distraction to throw the public off the trail of something much more secret.
We aren’t meant to know, then are we, so speculation is all we’ll ever have. National Security would always prevent disclosure of any such projects, even if they DON’T exist.
I think this site is horrible man!
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