Blackstar (spaceplane) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Blackstar is the reported codename of a secret United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

Spaceplane

A spaceplane is a vehicle that operates as an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere, as well as a spacecraft when it is in space. It combines features of an aircraft and a spacecraft, which can be thought of as an aircraft that can endure and maneuver in the vacuum of space or likewise a spacecraft that...

system. The possible existence of the Blackstar program was reported in March 2006 by Aviation Week & Space Technology

Aviation Week & Space Technology

Aviation Week & Space Technology, often abbreviated Aviation Week or AW&ST, is a weekly magazine owned and published by McGraw-Hill...

(Aviation Week, AWST) magazine; the magazine reported that the program had been underway since at least the early 1990s, and that the impetus for Blackstar was to allow the United States government to retain orbital reconnaissance

Reconnaissance

Reconnaissance is the military term for exploring beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about enemy forces or features of the environment....

capabilities jeopardized following the 1986 Challenger disaster

Space Shuttle Challenger disaster

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of central Florida at 11:38 am EST...

. The article also said that the United States Air Force

United States Air Force

The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...

's Space Command

Air Force Space Command

Air Force Space Command is a major command of the United States Department of the Air Force, with its headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. AFSPC supports U.S. military operations worldwide through the use of many different types of satellite, launch and cyber operations....

was unaware of Blackstar, suggesting it was operated by an intelligence agency

Intelligence agency

An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...

such as the National Reconnaissance Office

National Reconnaissance Office

The National Reconnaissance Office , located in Chantilly, Virginia, is one of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. It designs, builds, and operates the spy satellites of the United States government.-Mission:...

.

Aviation Week speculated that such a spacecraft could also have offensive military capabilities, a concept colloquially known as "The Space Bomber". The magazine also stated that it was likely that Blackstar would be mothballed, although it is unclear whether this is due to cost or failure of the program.

The Aviation Week report was a few days later dismissed as "almost certainly bogus" and the project termed a "technical absurdity" by Jeffrey F. Bell in an article in Spacedaily.

The Blackstar system

Aviation Week describes Blackstar as a two stage to orbit system, comprising a high-speed jet "mothership" aircraft (which Aviation Week referred to as the SR-3). Its description of SR-3 is similar to the North American

North American Aviation

North American Aviation was a major US aerospace manufacturer, responsible for a number of historic aircraft, including the T-6 Texan trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, the B-25 Mitchell bomber, the F-86 Sabre jet fighter, the X-15 rocket plane, and the XB-70, as well as Apollo Command and Service...

B-70 Valkyrie

XB-70 Valkyrie

The North American Aviation XB-70 Valkyrie was the prototype version of the proposed B-70 nuclear-armed deep-penetration strategic bomber for the United States Air Force's Strategic Air Command...

Mach 3

Mach number

Mach number is the speed of an object moving through air, or any other fluid substance, divided by the speed of sound as it is in that substance for its particular physical conditions, including those of temperature and pressure...

strategic bomber

Strategic bomber

A strategic bomber is a heavy bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of ordnance onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating an enemy's capacity to wage war. Unlike tactical bombers, which are used in the battle zone to attack troops and military equipment, strategic bombers are...

, and to patents filed in the 1980s by Boeing

Boeing Integrated Defense Systems

Boeing Defense, Space & Security formerly known as Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is a unit of The Boeing Company responsible for defense and aerospace products and services. Boeing Integrated Defense Systems was formed in 2002 by combining the former "Military Aircraft and Missile Systems"...

. The SR-3 would carry a second, smaller airframe, codenamed the XOV (eXperimental Orbital Vehicle) underneath, between its two laterally separated engine-banks, containing each 2 or 3 engines. This rocket-powered spaceplane

Spaceplane

, with similarities to the X-20 Dyna-Soar

X-20 Dyna-Soar

The X-20 Dyna-Soar was a United States Air Force program to develop a spaceplane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and sabotage of enemy satellites...

project, would be released by its mothership at an altitude of around 100,000 feet. The XOV would then light its rocket motor (aerospike engine

Aerospike engine

The aerospike engine is a type of rocket engine that maintains its aerodynamic efficiency across a wide range of altitudes through the use of an aerospike nozzle. It is a member of the class of altitude compensating nozzle engines. A vehicle with an aerospike engine uses 25–30% less fuel at low...

s, similar to those used by the Lockheed Martin X-33

Lockheed Martin X-33

The Lockheed Martin X-33 was an unmanned, sub-scale technology demonstrator suborbital spaceplane developed in the 1990s under the U.S. government-funded Space Launch Initiative program. The X-33 was a technology demonstrator for the VentureStar orbital spaceplane, which was planned to be a...

), and could achieve both suborbital and orbital

Orbital spaceflight

An orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which a spacecraft is placed on a trajectory where it could remain in space for at least one orbit. To do this around the Earth, it must be on a free trajectory which has an altitude at perigee above...

flight; one source quoted by Aviation Week estimates the XOV could reach an orbit of 300 miles (482.8 km) above the Earth, depending on payload and mission profile. The XOV would then reenter the atmosphere and glide back to any landing site where it would land horizontally on a conventional runway. This combination of jet-powered mothership and a smaller rocket-powered spaceplane resembles the civilian Tier One

Tier One

Tier One is Scaled Composites' program of suborbital human spaceflight using the reusable spacecraft SpaceShipOne and its launcher White Knight. The craft was designed by Burt Rutan, and the project is funded 20 million US Dollars by Paul Allen...

spaceplane system as well as NASA's X-15, but capable of much higher velocities and of thus attaining orbit. Readers are cautioned to examine the challenges involved in supersonic separation of vehicles as opposed to the more common subsonic separation of ordnance from aircraft, but this separation from the belly might be easier than from the top, which proved to be problematic on the Lockheed D-21/M-21

Lockheed D-21/M-21

The Lockheed D-21 was an American Mach 3+ reconnaissance drone. The D-21 was initially designed to be launched from the back of its M-21 carrier aircraft, a variant of the Lockheed A-12 aircraft. Development began in October 1962...

The program

The primary use of a military spaceplane such as Blackstar would be to conduct high-altitude or orbital reconnaissance, allowing surprise overflights of foreign locations with very low risk of the spyplane being successfully engaged by existing air-defense systems. This is similar to the goals of the earlier U-2

Lockheed U-2

The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is a single-engine, very high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency . It provides day and night, very high-altitude , all-weather intelligence gathering...

and SR-71 Blackbird

SR-71 Blackbird

The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" was an advanced, long-range, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft. It was developed as a black project from the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in the 1960s by the Lockheed Skunk Works. Clarence "Kelly" Johnson was responsible for many of the...

reconnaissance aircraft; in some circumstances such an overflight yields more information than a pass by a reconnaissance satellite

Spy satellite

A spy satellite is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications....

, as the satellite's path is predictable, allowing sensitive material to be hidden.

Military analysts have suggested that a military spaceplane could also be used to place small satellites in orbit, to retrieve them, to provide a means of launching nuclear weapons from orbit, or to serve as a platform for exotic orbit-to-ground hypervelocity weapons. The small spaceplane described by Aviation Week appears to have only a very modest cargo capacity, limiting its use in such missions.

Aviation Week suggests that the huge costs of the Blackstar program were borne both by the Department of Defense's own black budget and by hiding the costs of Blackstar inside the procurement costs attached to acknowledged military purchases. To assist in this, and to allow politicians to deny the USAF operates such a vehicle, the Blackstar assets may nominally be owned and operated by the civilian defense contractors who built it. The magazine suggests that a consortium of Boeing and Lockheed

Lockheed Corporation

The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace company. Lockheed was founded in 1912 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995.-Origins:...

are responsible for Blackstar.

It is unclear if the Blackstar program became fully operational, although it may have been so since the mid 1990s. Aviation Weeks article speculated that the success of Blackstar explains the Government's willingness to cancel the SR-71 Blackbird and Air Force satellite-launch programs.

Discussions of similar aircraft

During the 1970s, when studies were underway which led to the specification of the Space Shuttle, most leading US aerospace contractors explored orbital spaceplane designs, some based on a two-stage design. The most serious of these was the Lockheed

Lockheed Corporation

The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace company. Lockheed was founded in 1912 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995.-Origins:...

HGV under the X-24C

X-24C

Lockheed L-301 was an experimental air-breathing hypersonic aircraft project. It was developed by the NASA and USAF organization National Hypersonic Flight Research Facility , with Skunk Works as the prime contractor...

program, which was a manned hypersonic vehicle dropped from underwing a B-52, even to the point of rumors that it had actually been flight tested, according to Encyclopedia Astronautica

Encyclopedia Astronautica

The Encyclopedia Astronautica is a reference web site on space travel. A comprehensive catalog of vehicles, technology, astronauts, and flights, it includes information from most countries that have had an active rocket research program, from Robert Goddard to the NASA Space shuttle to the Soviet...

. With the adoption of the Space Shuttle

Space Shuttle

The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...

design, these avenues appear to have been abandoned. The use of a spaceplane as part of the launching system to replace the Space Shuttle has been suggested in programs such as VentureStar

VentureStar

VentureStar was a proposed spaceplane design for a single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch system by Lockheed Martin. The program's primary goal as a United States federally funded program was to develop a reusable unmanned spaceplane for launching satellites into orbit at a fraction of the cost of...

.

Some of the details of the SR-3 resemble the rumored Brilliant Buzzard or “Mothership” aircraft, but these were supposed to carry their second stage aircraft on top, rather than on the bottom as with the SR-3. This second stage was rumored to be Aurora

Aurora aircraft

Aurora was a rumored mid-1980s American reconnaissance aircraft. There is no substantial evidence that it was ever built or flown and it has been termed a myth.The U.S. government has consistently denied such an aircraft was ever built...

, (a high-speed, high-altitude delta-winged aircraft), and the lengthening of runways at facilities such as Area 51 (taken by some as evidence of Aurora) could instead be necessary either to support SR-3's takeoff or XOV's landing. Most descriptions of Aurora, however, describe it as a hypersonic plane with exotic engine technology; the SR-3 described by Aviation Magazine is similar to existing rocket-powered aircraft. Pulse Detonation Engine

Pulse detonation engine

A pulse detonation engine, or "PDE", is a type of propulsion system that uses detonation waves to combust the fuel and oxidizer mixture. The engine is pulsed because the mixture must be renewed in the combustion chamber between each detonation wave initiated by an ignition source. Theoretically, a...

(PDE) technology, visually apparent by donuts-on-a-rope contrail - and audibly by its deep bass pulsing boom noise, has been associated with these programs from eyewitness accounts during the 1990s.

In the late 1960s the North American Aircraft Corporation studied conceptual designs using the B-70 bomber for small space launch of an X-15 type rocket plane. These were abandoned as unpromising.

What is known, and a matter of public record, is that, through the 1980s and 1990s, the USAF did undertake a series of projects to study, research, develop and test demonstrator vehicles capable of SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit

Single-stage-to-orbit

A single-stage-to-orbit vehicle reaches orbit from the surface of a body without jettisoning hardware, expending only propellants and fluids. The term usually, but not exclusively, refers to reusable vehicles....

) and TSTO (two-stage-to-orbit

Two-stage-to-orbit

A two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle is a spacecraft in which two distinct stages provide propulsion consecutively in order to achieve orbital velocity...

) missions. These programs were code-named, in order, SCIENCE DAWN, SCIENCE REALM

Science Realm

Science Realm is a United States Government project with the aim of creating a vertical-takeoff horizontal-landing single stage to orbit craft, the term is also associated with the software this project uses to simulate takeoff and landing....

, COPPER CANYON, and COPPER COAST

Copper Coast

*This article is about a region in Australia. For coast of County Waterford, Ireland, see Copper Coast .Copper Coast is a region of South Australia situated in Northern Yorke Peninsula and comprising the towns of Wallaroo, Kadina, Moonta, Paskeville and Port Hughes. The area approximately bounded...

, and involved the development of three different competitive demonstrator vehicles. It was at the conclusion of COPPER CANYON's design phase that President Reagan proposed the X-30 NASP

Rockwell X-30

-See also:-References: 2. -External links:*...

, which is claimed by the Blackstar story to have been used to pay for development of this spaceplane.

According to one declassified RAND Corp. report, two of the three vehicles failed to achieve their full flight envelope (i.e. couldn't make orbit), while the third, an "assisted SSTO", did achieve orbital capability. Furthermore, three code-named programs to design the stealthing of these three vehicles fell under the programs known as HAVE BLINDERS I, HAVE BLINDERS II, and HAVE BLINDERS III. All of these programs can be found in US military budget documents, with associated budget account numbers for years in the 1980s up into the late 1990s in the case of COPPER COAST, though the code name was dropped from the account number in the mid-1990s, even though many millions were budgeted up until recent years.

Whether any of these vehicles were individually code named "BLACKSTAR" is unknown at this time.

Blackswift

Details emerged in 2008 of an unmanned hypersonic platform called Blackswift, otherwise known as HTV-3X or X-43A, part of the DARPA Falcon Project.

Computer-generated concept videos of the tests of this vehicle were made available by NASA / Lockheed Martin in June 2008.

May 2006 UK Defence report on "Black" aircraft sightings

In May 2006, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) released an extensive report on Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) in the UK air defence area http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5079044.stm. It was written by the Defence Intelligence Staff in 2000 and was originally classified "SECRET UK eyes only". One of the Working Papers is entitled ""BLACK" AND OTHER AIRCRAFT AS UAP EVENTS". It says "it is acknowledged that some UAP sightings can be attributed to covert aircraft programmes". The report lists three "Western" programmes which might result in this – all of which appear to be American. The first – not surprisingly – is the SR-71. Programme 2 and Programme 3 are redacted from the report – even their names are withheld. Two photos are also redacted. This was reported on June 14, 2006 by BBC Newsnight.

External links

BBC Newsnight 14 June 2006 Links to UK MoD "Black" aircraft working paper
The Space Review: Six blind men in a zoo: Aviation Week’s mythical Blackstar Dwayne A. Day, The Space Review
The Space Review
The Space Review is a free online publication, published weekly with in-depth articles, essays, commentary and reviews on space exploration and development. It was founded in February 2003 by Jeff Foust, the current editor, publisher and regular writer....

, Monday, March 13, 2006
robotpig.net - TSTO spaceplanes presentation of a Boeing TSTO patent, the blackstar tsto and the respective technologies
Blackstar: the US space conspiracy that never was?

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.