Blackstar?

[mmcirvin]

Aviation 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.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sounds tricky. Though rocket booster separation certainly happens at way-supersonic speeds without destroying anything (usually).

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's true, and at considerable altitude as well. Although the rocket booster already has its engine on at separation, while in the case of mothership/dropship deployment (and in some but not all cases of missiles being fired from aircraft), usually the smaller vehicle's engine ignites after dropping. (I'm not sure, but I'd bet that the larger the missile, the more likely it drops first instead of shooting off the wing, but then again, larger missiles generally mean longer range missiles, which can mean more hazardous fuels, etc.)

I dunno. Go Enginerds!