Blackstar?
Mar. 6th, 2006 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinAviation Leak claims that the US may have been operating a secret orbital spaceplane system in the 1990s, now quietly cancelled for unknown reasons.
I don't know what to think of this. The basic design doesn't seem outrageously absurd to me, since ideas along these general lines have been batted around ever since the 1950s.
That business about the revolutionary fuel, "a boron-based gel having the consistency of toothpaste and high-energy characteristics, but occupying less volume than other fuels," smells funny; it strikes me as the kind of thing one usually hears associated with hoaxes. But apparently a fuel based on ethyl borane was proposed for the XB-70 supersonic bomber back in the fifties, which could make this either more plausible or just a cleverer hoax.
I don't know what to think of this. The basic design doesn't seem outrageously absurd to me, since ideas along these general lines have been batted around ever since the 1950s.
That business about the revolutionary fuel, "a boron-based gel having the consistency of toothpaste and high-energy characteristics, but occupying less volume than other fuels," smells funny; it strikes me as the kind of thing one usually hears associated with hoaxes. But apparently a fuel based on ethyl borane was proposed for the XB-70 supersonic bomber back in the fifties, which could make this either more plausible or just a cleverer hoax.