Air Force's Falcon Hypersonic Glider disappears

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mach 20 is way over escape velocity... So if they experienced a slight loss of control, it might have shot off into space... Good luck finding it!

Consider yourself corrected, not even close to escapve velocity.

Originally posted by Zaphod

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mach 20 is way over escape velocity... So if they experienced a slight loss of control, it might have shot off into space... Good luck finding it!

Consider yourself corrected, not even close to escapve velocity.

Looks like you are correct sir.

Mach 20 is 15,220 mph, and escape velocity is 25,034 mph.

So this craft was traveling about 60% of escape velocity. It didn't leave earth's gravity.

The risks at separation are high for experimental spacecraft on their early flights.

However, there are several key clues that are likely, based on this snippet.

1- Why weren't disrupted parts detected by the sophisticated radars that would have undoubtedly been monitoring such a unique launch attempt. How likely is that to indicate a high degree of Stealth components.

2- What if they did not lose contact, but the craft was designed to go into a "high-stealth" mode? In this case, the loss of contact from "routine" monitoring could have been the very plan for the craft.

3- What if the test craft launched was not the real experimental vehicle? This would be a great piece of misinformation.

This is just a simple list, but it does illustrate that when working with classified projects, actual truth may be difficult to discern.

Originally posted by Truth1000
3- What if the test craft launched was not the real experimental vehicle? This would be a great piece of misinformation.

This is just a simple list, but it does illustrate that when working with classified projects, actual truth may be difficult to discern.

While it's entertaining to read all the disinformation/misinformation theories, if there's nothing to base them on other than pure speculation, we don't have any reason to give them any preference over any other speculation.

If they really wanted to keep it more secret they could just increase the security classification and tell us less about it.

I have questions like, did it have a black box? And if so like all black boxes it would have had a transponder.

There's no mention of that in the article. Maybe it didn't because it was experimental, or if it did, it might have burned up at that speed.

I supposed if you're testing something at mach 20, you can't be too surprised if your first test flight has problems. That's pretty far outside our envelope of routine experience, as far as we in the declassified world know anyway. My guess is even in the classified world, they may have Mach 6-8 experience, but maybe not mach 20.

That's a good point about radar tracking data. Is it so stealthy even radar couldn't track it after it stopped sending data? I would think there are IR satellites that could track the heat signature of something going that fast.

May be it still had enough speed to leave the grasp of Earth's gravity and continued on into the final frontier.

Originally posted by macb6497
May be it still had enough speed to leave the grasp of Earth's gravity and continued on into the final frontier.

That question was already asked, and answered just a few posts up:

Originally posted by harrytuttle

Originally posted by Zaphod

Originally posted by buddhasystem
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Mach 20 is way over escape velocity... So if they experienced a slight loss of control, it might have shot off into space... Good luck finding it!

Consider yourself corrected, not even close to escapve velocity.

Looks like you are correct sir.

Mach 20 is 15,220 mph, and escape velocity is 25,034 mph.

So this craft was traveling about 60% of escape velocity. It didn't leave earth's gravity.

I can see why people don't read 20 page long threads before replying, but my goodness this thread isn't really too long to read before replying, is it?

Picky picky....no grumbling from the peanut gallery...just rehash the data one more time...
This high speed wonder may have been absconded with by the saucer people.....
Funny how the triangles showed up back in the 80s and now i see these wedge shaped human attempts to produce similar craft.
Are we simply being led by outsiders to slowly develope the hardware....and technologies, to make it off planet.
Like the avro saucer we tried to make....way back in 52
What kind of heat resistant material will withstand the speeds within the lower atmosphere?
Is this a titanium craft?
Its getting very interesting material wise folks....remember the glued on shuttle tiles?
This must be some very hush hush stuff its made out of.
My bet its built of memory metal....Battelle inst pat.or some similar material.
Which was developed directly from pieces of the Roswell craft by Batelle in the early 50s too.

reply to post by stirling


I'm not sure how factual your post was but I liked it anyway.

Did that Bastile guy(sorry, don't remember his name) patent memory metal? Obviously I have seen the Roswell film and remember the account of the memory metal but did someone actually patent it back in the fifties?

I know Darpa have developed memory metal, I can find links if you want?

Escape velocity is mach 34...so the officaly speed of the falcon is well below that.

Now that we have that out of the way, the official story may be all lies.
Here is what we don't know:
- we don't know what type of propulsion was used
- we don't know how fast the falcon can really travel
- we don't know what time the falcon was really lost
- we don't know if the falcon was really lost
- we don't know whether the falcon was really unmanned
- we don't know where the falcon went
- we don't know if the falcon was the real test vehicle
- we don't know if escape velocity is even relevant to discuss, as the test vehicle (if it was a test) may have done something that has nothing to do with speed as we understand it in order to get wherever it was sent.

I am sure there are smarter people who can lengthen the list.

its probably still up in orbit and they are lieing to us. Supposedly SDI has the capability to rain down du-sabot rounds (100 lb. bullets that can penetrate a mile into the ground and possibly further) and eliminate any world leader at almost any time. pretty scary to think we have two space programs and everyone thinks we only have NASA LOL.

Interesting that this thread was started in 2010, but according to the article in today's paper 12th August 2011 the hypersonics first test flight was yesterday the 11th August 2011 and went missing yesterday.

After being intrigued by the shape of the computer images of this thing as it was very similar to the shape of many ufo videos i have seen over the last couple of years. Big difference is the ones in the videos i have seen don't have jet engines and are silent and also like to hover silently.

So i thought to myself id like to have a look at this thing. But to no avail! Has anyone seen a picture of this thing? A real picture?

My feeling is it doesn't even exist!

It could simply be a ploy to convince people that when they see these triangular craft in the sky people will assume it's from the military or dare i even say man made! Or it could be ........... ahhhhh the possibilities are near endless as to why, but regardless i still think that this thing doesn't even exist!
If i saw a REAL picture of it I'll rethink my stance but that doesn't mean I'll change my mind!

So I'll end this post asking once again

Has anyone actually seen a REAL picture of this thing?

What gets really interesting is that if you read the information about all the test flights, it APPEARS that there is a 9 minute barrier in hypersonic flight. It almost seems to be like the sound barrier in the 1940s, and there is a wall at that point. The most recent test to go "missing" entered an unsafe attitude condition caused by large pieces of the airframe peeling off (completely expected, but larger than expected), creating a condition that the flight computer couldn't stabilize. Another test flight failed due to the same unsafe attitude warning, also at 9 minutes. Then there was another test flight that just vanished, also at the 9 minute mark. They are reaching around the Mach 20 area, and then the "9 minute barrier" hits, and they are losing the airframes.

So basically the thing disintegrated as it approached mach20. Or sustained high speed friction heat build up past a critical temp at around 9 min which caused it to literally melt away.

I can't imagine the forces being applied on the frame of that vehicle at that speed and amount friction, upper atmosphere or not. it's gotta be similar to putting the poor thing in a industrial furnace while hosing it with a high powered sand blaster for 9 minutes straight. That metals gotta become malleable to the point it turns into putty with that kinda heat. Now imagine if one of the engines blows out and sends the thing into a spin or just slams it so hard that it blows apart.

reply to post by BASSPLYR


Exactly. The forces that the airframe are being subjected to are so much more than a "normal" airframe will ever see in its lifetime. Even the SR-71 never came close to what these demonstrators are undergoing. Back in the 1940s, it was said that the sound barrier was a wall that we would never penetrate, because no aircraft could be built that could withstand the forces involved. I have the feeling that we're seeing something similar here, that we're learning about.

I remember kelly johnson ( i think it was him) saying that the airframe of the sr-71 would get so hot that pilots literally would watch as the metal melted and oozed up the windscreen/canopy. And that was at mach 3.2


Like you said the forces involved are almost unimaginable.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
What gets really interesting is that if you read the information about all the test flights, it APPEARS that there is a 9 minute barrier in hypersonic flight. It almost seems to be like the sound barrier in the 1940s, and there is a wall at that point. The most recent test to go "missing" entered an unsafe attitude condition caused by large pieces of the airframe peeling off (completely expected, but larger than expected), creating a condition that the flight computer couldn't stabilize. Another test flight failed due to the same unsafe attitude warning, also at 9 minutes. Then there was another test flight that just vanished, also at the 9 minute mark. They are reaching around the Mach 20 area, and then the "9 minute barrier" hits, and they are losing the airframes.

So what your saying is it only takes 9 minutes to transfer all controll to the CIA and DARPA. They need to do better. The pit crews are getting lazy. Time for some boot camp training to whip them into shape.

Originally posted by BASSPLYR
I remember kelly johnson ( i think it was him) saying that the airframe of the sr-71 would get so hot that pilots literally would watch as the metal melted and oozed up the windscreen/canopy. And that was at mach 3.2


Like you said the forces involved are almost unimaginable.

Hard to believe but the dynamic pressure on the airframe at mach 3 at 80,000 ft. is the equivalent to 400 knts at sea-level as was famously demonstrated by an A-12 test pilot who purposefully dropped the landing gear at mach 3 to slow down without damage to the aircraft.