From: ad207@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Brett Kollar)
Subject: Aurora
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 20:32:24 GMT


From ad207@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Brett Kollar)


From ad207@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Brett Kollar)


Has anyone heard any more info on the Aurora lately?  I found an
interesting article on it.  LOTS of good stuff lately...

The following was reprinted without the permission of the owner...but I 
am sure it will start even more discussion!!!



Popular Science, August 1992
Science Newsfront
Edited by DAWN STOVER

What hypersonic airplane?

    Something very strange is flying around at terrific speeds.  
Although no on has managed to photograph the craft itself, its radar 
image, unique exhaust contrail, engine sound, and sonic boom have all 
been characterized in multiple reports by observers in the Western 
United States and Great Britain.  Yet questions directed to the prime 
suspect in mystery-plane cases - the U.S. Air Force - yield only denials 
of any knowledge.
    The aircraft betraying its shadowy presence may be a high-altitude
hypersonic spy plane code-named "Aurora" that's presumed to have 
replaced the retired SR-71 Blackbird ["Revealed! Mach 5 Spy Plane," Nov. 
'88].  On five occasions since June 1991, the U.S. Geological Survey's 
extensive network of earthquake-monitoring seismographs in Southern 
California has recorded window-rattling sonic booms produced by an 
airplane traveling northeast at several times the speed of sound.
    The booms have all occurred on Thursdays at about 7 a.m., says U.S.
Geological Survey seismologist James J. Mori at the California Institute 
of Technology in Pasadena.  "We call them airquakes," he says.  "This 
mystery plane has a distinctly different sonic-boom wave form than other 
large, supersonic aircraft like the space shuttle and the SR-71.  We 
track it because people have been calling us wanting to know if there's 
been an earthquake."
    Many observers in several states have reported hearing very loud, 
deep rumbling and pulsating sounds coming from an aircraft moving at 
high speed.  An aircraft emitting these sounds was spotted this past 
February taking off at night from Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento, 
Calf.  Its propulsion system may be a pulse detonation wave engine - a 
known type that develops thrust in intermittent bursts, rather than 
continuously - according to reports in the trade journal _Aviation Week 
& Space Technology_.
    Bill Sweetman, an expert on classified "black" military programs, 
suggests in _Jane's Defense Weekly_ that the aircraft may be capable of 
reaching Mach 6 (4,000 mph) burning liquid methane or hydrogen fuel.  He 
believes the plane is returning from hypersonic (greater than Mach 5) 
flights over the Pacific Ocean and decelerating over the Los Angeles 
area as it heads northeast for a landing at the highly classified flight 
test base at Groom Lake, Nev.
    Sweetman reports that a Royal air Force air traffic controller 
tracked an aircraft leaving the remote NATO-RAF base at Machrihanish in 
western Scotland last November at a speed of Mach 3.  No acknowledged 
aircraft capable of such speed is based there.
    Call it Aurora, the mystery plane, or whatever.  The ultrafast,
groundshaking high-flyer may be on of the latest in a long line of 
exotic aircraft that have resulted from Lockheed Corp.'s fabled Skunk 
Works.  Financial analysts note that the company's budget and work force 
can only be fully accounted for by one or more substantial black 
programs secretly funded by the Pentagon - and perhaps the intelligence 
services. - _Stuart F. Brown_

Pictures omited for obvious reasons, but the caption reads:
    These photos (left) of the unique, pulsing exhaust contrail of an 
aircraft flying at high altitude over Amarillo, Texas, were taken on 
March 23.  The Plane passes out of sight before the photographer could 
locate it.  U.S. Geological Survey seismic profiles (above) show the 
space shuttle's distinctive N-shaped sonic-boom wave form and the 
mystery plane's more complex signature.
-- 

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