This is the amazing Lockheed Martin SR-72—the space Blackbird

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


You also don't build a hangar for something 11 years before you plan on flying it.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Planning and doing are entirely different things - sometimes related by nothing more than fervent wishes!

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


Yes they are, but you don't build infrastructure for something that isn't even close to flying. You build the infrastructure when you're at least close to flying, or ready to fly.

reply to post by Zaphod58


How long now has the structure been up, Zaphy?

reply to post by kingofyo1


It was built around early to mid-2007. It was completed around the end of summer that year.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Then, with all reasonable assumptions, I'd say the plane has to have been flying for at LEAST 5 years

So, no doubt this program has cost untold billions of dollars, all in secrecy. What I'd like to know is where does the TR-3B fit in? Who's funding it and for what purpose? Why spend all of that money on the SR-72 with it's, (in comparison) backwards technology, when warp drive apparently already exists? It's like they run these ruse programs (SR-72) as covers so they don't have to expose the blacker programs. No wonder the country has tremendous debt. Running two separate multi billion programs, one comparable to the stagecoach and the other to Star Trek.

Zaphod58
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

 

Yes they are, but you don't build infrastructure for something that isn't even close to flying. You build the infrastructure when you're at least close to flying, or ready to fly.

Not necessarily - it might well be a building in which all the assembly and construction is being carried out.

reply to post by kingofyo1


That's pretty close to my best guess as well. They could easily have flown it with just the turbine engines, testing those out first, without going hypersonic.

Zaphod58
reply to post by MystikMushroom

 

Aurora was the line item for the B-2 funding when it was classified still. It was left in the public release of the budget, and someone saw it and ran with it. It was never a concept or anything of the sort. Just someone reading something and running.

Ah, so THAT explains what the donuts on a rope are... Oh, wait I guess you must have missed that post and instead replied to the person responding to that posts instead....by accident.... Or maybe it was...ahem... *musters up his best impression of a DoD official speaking at a press conference* "...deemed to be an unimportant matter at this time and unworthy of our attention, you know, because we are so important and all and your questions do not deserve to be answered unless it can somehow help us in our agenda" yeah I know, my impression sucks...must be that darned honesty gene my DNA is cursed with...

I searched page two as well, but I didnt have the energy to continue after that... I tend to lose energy and interest when dealing with people who dodge questions clearly directed towards anyone here who might know... Oh...that's it, isn't it? You don't know. Well sorry for being a grouchy pants then... I wasn't aware that your possibly fragile ego was on the line...

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


It's not big enough for construction of an aircraft. They don't build at Area 51, they test there.

reply to post by sqorpius


The TR-3B doesn't exist.

Zaphod58
reply to post by sqorpius

 

The TR-3B doesn't exist.

.......and you know this, how?

reply to post by 3n19m470


I'm sorry for being human. I miss posts, especially in a fast moving thread where more questions are thrown up as I'm posting. I've tried to answer every question I saw. If you want to get pissy, and claim my ego is on the line have fun with that, but my ego is a lot stronger than that.

But exactly what question did I miss? This is your first post in the thread, so I know you didn't ask it.

But as far as the "donuts on a rope", they can form from natural conditions as well. I've seen it happen, and so have others. A PDE engine is very inefficient and isn't capable of reaching the speeds attributed to them.

Zaphod58
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

 

It's not big enough for construction of an aircraft. They don't build at Area 51, they test there.

The structures I've seen mentioned at Groom Lake are certainly big enough to build a handful of aircraft - this is not going to be a 747-sized assembly line!

reply to post by sqorpius


Logic, and insider information.

It's a Special Access Program, and yet people claim to know every single detail about it, but there are SAPs out there now, that I KNOW are operational, that there's barely a mention on some way out of the way website, that you have to go through four, five, or six websites to get to, and it's pure speculation that they exist. That always amazes me.

reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul


No it's not, but it's also not a matter of putting the pieces in there, and putting them together. They would have to bring specialized equipment in to put them together, as well as specialized workers. It makes more sense to build them somewhere like Plant 42, and take them to Groom for testing, like they have always done. That way you don't have a lot of people walking around on Groom, and you don't have to haul in tons of equipment either.

reply to post by sqorpius


"evidence" of one man who "may" have been at area 51 who "claims" to have worked on something related to it does not count as unadulterated evidence in my book. I've seen too many reasons to not believe and not enough reasons to believe in a 3b at this point There's been way too many billions spent on chemical propulsion and actual aircraft to warrant the amount thats supposed to have been developed on the 3b. Also, if you want to talk about reasons the 3b doesn't exist, lets look at the designator... TR is a designator designed by which Teledyne Ryan bases their aircraft. Supposedly, the 3b was created by lockheed though? mmmm dont think so. When I see one of these triangles in front of me, and americans pop out and say "Yep, this is ours!" I'll believe it.

reply to post by kingofyo1


Actually TR would be Tactical Reconnaissance in the military designation. But something like the TR-3B wouldn't be for Tactical Recon, it would be for Strategic Recon, to cover a large area, not just small areas.

Zaphod58
reply to post by Aloysius the Gaul

 

No it's not, but it's also not a matter of putting the pieces in there, and putting them together. They would have to bring specialized equipment in to put them together, as well as specialized workers.

That depends on how the components are constructed - jigs are not hard to build in situ, and how would you know if "specialised workers" were here or not? They don't look any different to anyone else. Tooling? It's not going to be massive machinery - even if it is sophisticated.

It makes more sense to build them somewhere like Plant 42, and take them to Groom for testing, like they have always done. That way you don't have a lot of people walking around on Groom, and you don't have to haul in tons of equipment either.

So how do you get these already assembled airframes to Groom then? Remember all the photos of hte SR71's and A-12's being trucked there?

I don't see that there's anything required for construction/assembly that couldn't be built on site.

And there's still the question of a working engine - given the lack of any hint of a working scramjet from anywhere in the world let alone one that is integrated with a turbine engine as is required for this.

dot' get me wrong - I'm looking forward to the next high tech aircraft.....I'm just not going to instantly believe as completely true every rumor that comes out - or indeed any of them until there's a little more concrete info.