aviationnow.com — Aviation Week has taken the lid off of 16 years of information that it has obtained about "Blackstar" A covert military shuttle based on the XB-70 Valkyrie and Dynasoar technology. The stories reports that costs have apparently led to the program being retired.
Mar 6, 2006 View in Crawl 4
sabotMar 6, 2006
The next great step for man should be the complete shut down of NASA, and we should begin the real space race. For 20 Million we got a plane that can fly into space. I wounder what we could get for just 1 billion?Manned space flight is the point of space flight. If you want to keep launching high tech toys into space, do it on your time.
aliensporebombMar 6, 2006
If you want to read more about the development of this, see:<a class="user" href="http://members.macconnect.com/users/q/quellish/dawn.spml">http://members.macconnect.com/users/q/quellish/dawn.spml</a>and click the folder marked 'brilliant buzzard'.
veritechMar 6, 2006
On another digg post, a guy posted a link with some info about the crash.<a class="user" href="http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html">http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html</a>You can see the actual picture here<a class="user" href="http://www.labiker.org/xb70/contrails.jpg">http://www.labiker.org/xb70/contrails.jpg</a>Many more pics on the site, thanks never knew about the mid-air incident
habuMar 7, 2006
Just finished reading the set of articles in this issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology. Very very interesting read. Sounds like they have most of it figured out. Worth going to your local library to read the rest of the articles.
aliensporebombMar 7, 2006
My understanding was black horse/colt was not yet built and was a private enterprise aircraft, not a government asset. See: <a class="user" href="http://www.risacher.org/bh/">http://www.risacher.org/bh/</a>And: <a class="user" href="http://www.rocketplane.com/home.asp">http://www.rocketplane.com/home.asp</a>Dan: I've read your stuff for years but definetely wanted your take on this - it does seem a little too convenient - parts for a third XB70 stored in a warehouse for decades, fuel breakthrus,NASP funds devoted to this, manned/unmanned versions.You'd have to wonder what this has been published for to takeattention away from something else.What next? Aurora comes out of the black "Oh, it's been operational for 20 years, no problem." Yeah, right.
mlorreyMar 9, 2006
The problem is that the Vision for Space Exploration is a luddite vision, created by ATK Thiokol Corporation to maximize the use of its dangerous and low performance SRBs. Do the research. They funded the fake grassroots group that was lobbying for the VSE before NASA or the president adopted it. The existence of something like Blackstar means there are much better options. VSE is a jobs and corporate welfare program for an obsolete ICBM builder, to fund the reelections of certain senators and congressmen from Utah and Florida. It does nothing to inspire people about space exploration, it just just a rehash of the old "space is just for fighter jocks" bullcrap, and it is also designed to keep the biggest boat anchor of the shuttle program, the 17,000 government employee and aerospace worker union jobs, in employment on the taxpayer's dollar. This does nothing to achieve affordable spaceflight, and none of it does anything to develope any sort of significant infrastructure in space to develop industry or bootstrap colonization. I wouldn't be surprised if Blackstar were being mothballed to save the Bush admin the ambarassment. Too late.