WTF was that refueling

a reply to: TheHans

ASTRA wasn't an airframe, high speed or otherwise.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Was Astra a project name?

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

Yes.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Does it stands for Airborne Surveillance and TRAcking in this case?

originally posted by: TheHans
A few themes are jumping out. First, the oddly authoritative wiki on Black Star states that “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.” Either this a fabrication, disiminformation, or perhaps “assisted SSTO” means it gets refueled in mid air like the Black Horse: stargazer2006.online.fr...

Its none of that. The quote refers to the multitude of white world military SSTO studies in the 80s, Have Region specifically. They didn’t build any vehicles but prototype structures for risk reduction and to validate design concepts. Boeing met the design goals with the Reusable Aerodeynamic Space Vehicle concept but it was eventually merged with the NASP efforts.
It went something like this according to this paper: chapters.nss.org...

1980-82 Air Force Advanced Manned Space-Flight Capability study
1980-82 Air Force Transatmospheric Vehicle study
1982-84 Air HQ (RDSL) Science Dawn program
1984-85 Air Force Science Realm program
1984-86 DARPA Copper Canyon study
1986-88 Air Force Have Region program
1986-92 DOD-NASA National AeroSpace Plane (NASP) program

I’m lazy and someone has done all the work already, so just read up on the details here if interested:
www.secretprojects.co.uk...

The point is, none of these projects involve a XB-70 like mothership with an upper stage orbiter or whatever. Those projects looked at the feasibility of SSTO design and varied widely between HOTOL/VTOHOL, rockets and scramjets. None of it was far along and basically precursors to NASP and later projects like X-33. They were not at all focused on designing and building rather small scale TSTOs for military applications.
Of course I think all those white world efforts in part masked black world projects. At one point or another must have noticed that TSTO were far easier to build than SSTOs and would be very interesting for the military. I don’t think its just a coincidence that all those projects barely touch true TSTO designs.
If you look at all those programs listed above (and others not listed) there is no shortage of dead ends which may have been picked up in the black.
One possible avenue is a Copper Canyon / Copper Coast link, I wrote about it a while back:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: TheHans

You have a PM, TheHans.
Please check this out, please click on the letter icon in the upper right corner of an ATS page.

a reply to: TheHans

You have another PM, TheHans.
Please check this out.

a reply to: TheHans

Dude, another one.

For all - sorry for posting this but since inbox icon doesn't work when there is a new message, it is the only way to let know a member that he just got new message lol

i have found a possible though still pretty weird explanation for all those anomalous aircraft sightings, including yes that green lady:
in his book "operation trojan horse" ufologist john keel shows a bunch of very weird sightings from the 1930's to the 1960's, of anomalous aircraft, among them were a sighting of a bizarre huge but stubby winged plane seen over an airport in south america doing impossible movements, a black aircraft buzzing buildings in new york with a unusual speed, various phamton planes in sweden and much more
it seems those anomalous aircraft are made by the same cosmic trickster that is behind the ufo phenomena.

a reply to: SpeedFanatic

en.m.wikipedia.org...

One of my relatives spotted her a few days ago,first sighting in quite a while.The neatest sightings I`ve had lately were f35`s and a c17.Such is life on graveyard shift,see lights and that's about all,lol.He was impressed by the size and said when she peeled off the tanker she was gone very,very quickly.Wish I could get another look at her.

originally posted by: ridgerunner
One of my relatives spotted her a few days ago,first sighting in quite a while.The neatest sightings I`ve had lately were f35`s and a c17.Such is life on graveyard shift,see lights and that's about all,lol.He was impressed by the size and said when she peeled off the tanker she was gone very,very quickly.Wish I could get another look at her.

Is this the green lady or something different?

No KC135 action but just had my first ever viewing of ISS as it passed over Tucson (just under the moon) for 4 min. Very impressive. Just binoculars so really didn’t see anything but the light reflection. Not trying to hijack; the OP has me watching the sky all the time now, lol.

a reply to: mightmight

PDF from NRO on hypersonics in the late 60-70s

talk about ISINGLASS using oxy-florine engines and having EO sensors in the 70's flying above mach 20 at light levels well above 200,000ft

the more interesting part of the read is the forecast and under development pages, it is heavily redacted but there are some interesting tidbits including talk of flights of ISINGLASS prototypes and some redacted competitor had flown apparently.

and the talk of ISINGLASS II and forecasting for the 80's of hypersonic air breathers and quick reaction satellites that would be road mobil launched from hypersonic missiles or hypersonic aircraft that were already in development

a reply to: penroc3

interesting but you copied the wrong link apparently

a reply to: mightmight

ahh i tried to post a pdf of my computer and apparently it didn't work, let me fix that error

try this one

a reply to: penroc3

this is a video i have from my video system outside. if you want to get right to the good stuff start the vid at 1:25 and look at the lower bright 'star' and you'll see something come in fast and very rapidly slowdown travel a good distance and disappear

the reason i say 'star' you'll notice in the video there are 2 of these objects that seem to flash at each other and before and after the fast moving object there are random flashes in the sky.




here's one of a shooting star just for comparison at about 2:50




on a side note and full disclosure the video's are from the same night.



eta i can post the uncompressed video but as it is a pain will do so upon request, also the sky was crystal clear.

a reply to: penroc3

sorry for posting so much but if you watch the whole shooting star video youll see the blinking things all over the sky and in one of them there is a formation of 3 flashes in a straight line.


also the 2 bright 'stars' flash very close to all the instantly on/off flashes

seeing as these 2 videos were from the same night i have a feeling that they might have something to do with what is going on in the sky.

in the 'ufo' video in full rez you can see it come in and on a dime change directions kind of like that famous NASA ufo video of the 2 'ufos' doing extreme pull ups captured from the payload bay UV cam.


i didn't see these 2 videos with my own eyes(camera only) but i have recently seen allot of stuff happening in the night sky(kind of why i set up cams). I have seen what looks like stars all of a sudden accelerate and do 'on a dine' maneuvers a few times and they are always the same yellowish color and leave no trail or straks like space junk or meteorites.

so to me that basically there is something entering the atmosphere that is under some sort of control and is obviously going very very fast.

old programs like ISINGLAS(and the apparently already named ISINGLAS II) or RHINEBERRY or COPPER CANYON either themselves are still active programs or their offshoots are clearly active, be it the fruits of these programs or what there are clearly allot more going on in space that basically anyone knows.

im saving up for a UV cam, apparently it is easy to mod a cannon EOS camera to shoot in UV

a reply to: ridgerunner

Saw this in another thread, looks fake but fits your description.

files.abovetopsecret.com...

Pretty darn closea reply to: PhantomTwo