the green flame

a reply to: yuppa
The rabbit is a fast running animal there is a part of true in it

There's an article in The Space Review from back in 2010 thats provides some detail around project Isinglass. Also interesting reading about P&W engineers who thought their reusable rocket engine was better than anything else out there. I bet development went way farther than has been previously disclosed.

A bat outta Hell: the ISINGLASS Mach 22 follow-on to OXCART

I wonder if those old files were brought out of storage again as part of the development of other *ahem* boost glide programs.

I just thought as I was stood outside looking for a green streak, if it were an operational platform, and the green was zip fuel, then there is no reason to see it over the USA, it could fly out over the pacific dark and fire the zip fuel before it hits Japan to cross NK, China and Pakistan without a green trail.

If you have seen it over the US then why does it need zip fuel?

a reply to: Northernhollow

The emergence, out of the blue, of the Space Shuttle's thermal protection system in the late 70s as a complete, mature family of technologies, has always seemed a little suspicious to me.

a reply to: Forensick

Because it doesn't just go west.

a reply to: Barnalby

ceramic heat protection was not new there was fire bricks used in kilns and fireplaces NASA just made them bigger and better

ETA:

ceramics like that are essentially just foam made from glass like stuff, like regular foam works to keep heat or cold in or out in the shuttles case. they were working on heat management materials before Apollo

a reply to: penroc3

It's less the tiles than the reinforced carbon-carbon, but even the idea of a lightweight hollow honeycomb brick was still pretty radical, even if its distant cousins had been lining pizza ovens for centuries.

a reply to: Barnalby
cool video of the tiles

originally posted by: Barnalby
a reply to: penroc3

It's less the tiles than the reinforced carbon-carbon, but even the idea of a lightweight hollow honeycomb brick was still pretty radical, even if its distant cousins had been lining pizza ovens for centuries.

I always wondered the same thing about the XB 70 and if it was just slightly ahead of its time so they shelved it till tech maturee a bit more

a reply to: Woody510

more like it was outdated already.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Replace pacific with Atlantic then?

Is it likely it's a technology demonstrator?

a reply to: Forensick

It's been known to go that way more than once. It's in that grey area where it's operational, but in limited numbers so it's more than a tech demonstrator, but not at the same time.

a reply to: Zaphod58
Do you think we see the Green in the white in the near futur , if its now in grey ?

I believe he means where it flies is up for speculation hence in the grey area. Not the aircraft. Shes deep black. Vanta black.

a reply to: Zaphod58
Would it be fair to characterize the Green Lady as a stopgap after 0911 to revitalize high speed IMINT until the renewed hypersonic effort (Blackswift follow on with TBCC / scramjet) comes of age?
I envision TGL as little more than the turboramjet approach pushed to the practical maxium with added advanced materials to combat limitations due to frictional heat.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
I believe he means where it flies is up for speculation hence in the grey area. Not the aircraft. Shes deep black. Vanta black.

yes...she is the blackness where all blacks fear to tread lest they too are swallowed up into the void.

Well shoot guys, I may have finally spotted her, if she's still up there.

I live in NE Ohio. At about 7:25 tonight I was driving back from a restaurant southbound down a straight road with trees on either side with my girlfriend, when I saw a dim, pale green light cross the road, east to west, ahead of me about 30-40 degrees off the horizon. It was moving very steadily which made me think satellite at first, but it was brighter and moving much faster than satellites typically do.

I tried to get my girlfriend's attention and help her spot it but it was too late and the object went behind trees before she could pick it out from the stars. When we came around the next bend in the road it had either gone over the horizon or it was indistinguishable from the stars as it flew.

I find it hard to express the combination of the extremely steady path it took a across the sky and the speed at which it traveled. I only saw it for a few seconds, but based on how quickly it crossed my line of sight, it could have gone horizon to horizon in a minute or less. Nothing in flying-saucer territory, but enough to get the attention of a sober aviation nerd like myself.

I'm very interested in hearing if what I saw could've been her, and if not hearing if it's interesting at all.

a reply to: hawkguy

I found it interesting and thanks for the report.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Zaphod58

Without either of us disclosing her cruising speed do you think thats about maxed out as far as her top speed or do you think she can dash.

In the 1950s the qualitative relationship of drag coefficient vs Mach number was figured out. See, for example:

it.wikipedia.org...:Qualitive_variation_of_cd_with_mach_number.png

Basically, when an aircraft tries to accelerate from high subsonic (M ≈ .9) through the "sound barrier" the drag rises by a factor of 3 or 4. As you go faster, beyond M = 1, the drag coefficient steadily declines. During the design of the XB-70 Valkyrie, the engineers realized that, since the drag coefficient declines monotonically, the most efficient cruise speed (in terms of distance covered per unit of fuel and time consumed) is the max cruise speed. Originally, the Valkyrie was designed to cruise slower and then "dash" over the target, but once the North American engineers realized that that was stupid, the Air Force removed that requirement. There is no particular reason to cruise slower than max speed once you're beyond M = 1; you're just wasting time and fuel.

This is the logic behind Zaph's statement that the Green Lady can't "dash" much beyond its cruise speed.

P.S. This relation between drag coefficient and Mach number is also why (back in the 1970s) Boeing decided that a M = 2 Supersonic Transport (like the Concorde) made no economic sense. Going from M = 2 to M= 3 makes an SST a lot more cost effective from the standpoints of both fuel and time.

So why didn’t they make Concorde go faster