Posted: 12/3/2012 9:02:46 AM EDT
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Aviation Week: Secret Projects
No summary, you'll have to read the presentation. By the way, I agree with an opinion in there that some projects are covers. |
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Quoted:
Aviation Week: Secret Projects No summary, you'll have to read the presentation. By the way, I agree with an opinion in there that some projects are covers. Cool stuff - my flight dynamics professor had a hand in the MIRV development; he used to use them as reentry vehicle examples for calculating deceleration forces and control surface forces for objects travelling at hypersonic speeds. |
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http://www.aviationweek.com/Portals/aweek/media/secrets_AW_12_03_2012/1-isinglass.html
Huh, Liquid Hydrogen powered. Presumably a rocket, though Pratt did have expertise in liquid hydrogen powered turbojets from Project Suntan. |
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Quoted:
Aviation Week: Secret Projects No summary, you'll have to read the presentation. By the way, I agree with an opinion in there that some projects are covers. I know for a fact that Boeing had at least two major black cover programs back in the early '80's. Both were run by Don Jacob's SSD division of the old Boeing Aerospace (remember Bud Hebeler and Mark Miller?) out of the old 18-43 building at the Kent Space Center. I've always wondered what happened to Don Jacob, that was one smart man. I think they've sold off most of the KSC now, haven't been back there for +22 years. And one of those vehicles ended up on a color chart from a presentation that one of the VP's was giving one day to Boeing management. We got the call from Security a day or so later telling us to keep quiet about it. After all these years, I still remember seeing that chart and it taking me about 1 microsecond to realize that someone had fawked up with a pic of that vehicle on a chart it wasn't supposed to be on. I can't recall the VP's name, but he was a retired admiral. I'll probably remember his name in a day or so. My uncle used to run the financials for BA back in the day; the $$$ that used to run through the black programs at Boeing Aero was like shit through a goose he'd tell me. In the mid-to late-80's Mark Miller et al saw the end of the defense $$$ and made their big push for the late 80's "must win" programs. We won a couple of them but the only one that had legs was the Space Station program. Still growing strong after over 24 years. It was by far the largest and most successful (in terms of $$$ to Boeing) of all the "must win" programs. If anyone has a copy of the "High Technology" magazine from late 1988 announcing the win by Boeing, the President of Boeing that they show on the cover was very obviously drunk as a skunk when they took the pic. Which isn't all that unusual really. Back then, "belly up to the bar" had more meaning than just "take responsibility" than it does now, especially at Boeing Aerospace. In the late '80's, I could count on two hands the number of functional alcoholics that inhabited the north end of the 18-26, second floor Exec area (BA HQ). It's just the way business was done back then. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
Aviation Week: Secret Projects No summary, you'll have to read the presentation. By the way, I agree with an opinion in there that some projects are covers. I know for a fact that Boeing had at least two major black cover programs back in the early '80's. Both were run by Don Jacob's SSD division of the old Boeing Aerospace (remember Bud Hebeler and Mark Miller?) out of the old 18-43 building at the Kent Space Center. I've always wondered what happened to Don Jacob, that was one smart man. I think they've sold off most of the KSC now, haven't been back there for +22 years. And one of those vehicles ended up on a color chart from a presentation that one of the VP's was giving one day to Boeing management. We got the call from Security a day or so later telling us to keep quiet about it. After all these years, I still remember seeing that chart and it taking me about 1 microsecond to realize that someone had fawked up with a pic of that vehicle on a chart it wasn't supposed to be on. I can't recall the VP's name, but he was a retired admiral. I'll probably remember his name in a day or so. My uncle used to run the financials for BA back in the day; the $$$ that used to run through the black programs at Boeing Aero was like shit through a goose he'd tell me. In the mid-to late-80's Mark Miller et al saw the end of the defense $$$ and made their big push for the late 80's "must win" programs. We won a couple of them but the only one that had legs was the Space Station program. Still growing strong after over 24 years. It was by far the largest and most successful (in terms of $$$ to Boeing) of all the "must win" programs. If anyone has a copy of the "High Technology" magazine from late 1988 announcing the win by Boeing, the President of Boeing that they show on the cover was very obviously drunk as a skunk when they took the pic. Which isn't all that unusual really. Back then, "belly up to the bar" had more meaning than just "take responsibility" than it does now, especially at Boeing Aerospace. In the late '80's, I could count on two hands the number of functional alcoholics that inhabited the north end of the 18-26, second floor Exec area (BA HQ). It's just the way business was done back then. I've been to the Kent site one time, in either 1999 or 2000. I went there to consult on a shipping problem, St. Louis had a device that was going to be shipped in the Super Guppy, and the shipping guys at that site had a mess on their hands, they had one mode, make their dunnage and so on like it was going on a train. Anyway, that campus was pretty interesting, it looked exactly like a college. There were still a couple of humongous antennae for staring at the sky out in the fields, I'll bet those are gone now. Anyway, most of the people I know up there worked around the Development Center. Several of them bailed after the strike in 2000. One transferred here. I never met many of the people from 747-8 except the DER's. The old MDA headquarters here has had a few "receptions" in the prologue room that worked out nice. The cover programs that I suspect occurred between about 1990 and 1999. I think they were covering for Aurora. I had a short tenure on NASP during which I was responsible for the Full Scale Assembly, which was a giant titanium matrix-silicon carbide fiber assembly simulating the upper surface of the MDA vehicle which was designed to fly without thermal protection panels. I think I still have scars from getting speared by the fibers. That project died with the end of NASP. Or did it? 
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Hmm. From the Wiki article on Isinglass:
The aircraft would ignite its rocket engine and adopt a trajectory that would take it over the Soviet Union at speeds of Mach 20 and at an altitude of over 200,000 feet (61 km), before descending over the Pacific Ocean to a landing at Groom Lake, Nevada, as a glider Wonder if they later did something similar with an unmanned craft. |
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My guess is if there are any secret black projects ongoing today (and how would I know if there are?), they will come to a abrupt end on Jan 02, 2013.
The American people spoke, and a slight majority are idiots. The rest of us just have to get along as best we can. Mike Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |