Blackstar ( spacecraft ) Blackstar is the reported codename of a secret United States orbital spaceplane system . The possible existence of the Blackstar program was reported in March 2006 by " Aviation Week & Space Technology " ( " Aviation Week " , " AWST " ) magazine ; the magazine reported that the program had been underway since at least the early 1990s , and that the impetus for Blackstar was to allow the United States government to retain orbital reconnaissance capabilities jeopardized following the 1986 " Challenger " disaster . The article also said that the United States Air Force ' s Space Command was unaware of Blackstar , suggesting it was operated by an intelligence agency such as the National Reconnaissance Office . " Aviation Week " speculated that such a spacecraft could also have offensive military capabilities , a concept colloquially known as " The Space Bomber " . The magazine also stated that it was likely that Blackstar would be mothballed , although it is unclear whether this is due to cost or failure of the program . The " Aviation Week " report was a few days later dismissed as " almost certainly bogus " and the project termed a " technical absurdity " by Jeffrey F . Bell in an article in Spacedaily . The Blackstar system . " Aviation Week " describes Blackstar as a two stage to orbit system , comprising a high - speed jet " mothership " aircraft ( which " Aviation Week " referred to as the SR - 3 ) . Its description of SR - 3 is similar to the North American B - 70 Valkyrie Mach 3 strategic bomber , and to patents filed in the 1980s by Boeing . The SR - 3 would carry a second , smaller airframe , codenamed the XOV ( eXperimental Orbital Vehicle ) underneath , between its two laterally separated engine - banks , containing each 2 or 3 engines . This rocket - powered spaceplane , with similarities to the X - 20 Dyna - Soar project , would be released by its mothership at an altitude of around 100 , 000 feet . The XOV would then light its rocket motor ( aerospike engine s , similar to those used by the Lockheed Martin X - 33 ) , and could achieve both suborbital and orbital flight ; one source quoted by " Aviation Week " estimates the XOV could reach an orbit of above the Earth , depending on payload and mission profile . The XOV would then reenter the atmosphere and glide back to any landing site where it would land horizontally on a conventional runway . This combination of jet - powered mothership and a smaller rocket - powered spaceplane resembles the civilian Tier One spaceplane system as well as NASA ' s X - 15 , but capable of much higher velocities and of thus attaining orbit . Readers are cautioned to examine the challenges involved in supersonic separation of vehicles as opposed to the more common subsonic separation of ordnance from aircraft , but this separation from the belly might be easier than from the top , which proved to be problematic on the Lockheed D - 21 / M - 21 . The program . The primary use of a military spaceplane such as Blackstar would be to conduct high - altitude or orbital reconnaissance , allowing surprise overflights of foreign locations with very low risk of the spyplane being successfully engaged by existing air - defense systems . This is similar to the goals of the earlier U - 2 and SR - 71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft ; in some circumstances such an overflight yields more information than a pass by a reconnaissance satellite , as the satellite ' s path is predictable , allowing sensitive material to be hidden . Military analysts have suggested that a military spaceplane could also be used to place small satellites in orbit , to retrieve them , to provide a means of launching nuclear weapons from orbit , or to serve as a platform for exotic orbit - to - ground hypervelocity weapons . The small spaceplane described by " Aviation Week " appears to have only a very modest cargo capacity , limiting its use in such missions . " Aviation Week " suggests that the huge costs of the Blackstar program were borne both by the Department of Defense ' s own black budget and by hiding the costs of Blackstar inside the procurement costs attached to acknowledged military purchases . To assist in this , and to allow politicians to deny the USAF operates such a vehicle , the Blackstar assets may nominally be owned and operated by the civilian defense contractors who built it . The magazine suggests that a consortium of Boeing and Lockheed are responsible for Blackstar . It is unclear if the Blackstar program became fully operational , although it may have been so since the mid - 1990s . " Aviation Week " ' s article speculated that the success of Blackstar explains the Government ' s willingness to cancel the SR - 71 Blackbird and Air Force satellite - launch programs . Discussions of similar aircraft . During the 1970s , when studies were underway which led to the specification of the Space Shuttle , most leading US aerospace contractors explored orbital spaceplane designs , some based on a two - stage design . The most serious of these was the Lockheed HGV under the X - 24C program , which was a manned hypersonic vehicle dropped from underwing a B - 52 , even to the point of rumors that it had actually been flight tested , according to Encyclopedia Astronautica . With the adoption of the Space Shuttle design , these avenues appear to have been abandoned . The use of a spaceplane as part of the launching system to replace the Space Shuttle has been suggested in programs such as VentureStar . Some of the details of the SR - 3 resemble the rumored Brilliant Buzzard or “ Mothership ” aircraft , but these were supposed to carry their second stage aircraft on top , rather than on the bottom as with the SR - 3 . This second stage was rumored to be Aurora , ( a high - speed , high - altitude delta - winged aircraft ) , and the lengthening of runways at facilities such as Area 51 ( taken by some as evidence of Aurora ) could instead be necessary either to support SR - 3 ' s takeoff or XOV ' s landing . Most descriptions of Aurora , however , describe it as a hypersonic plane with exotic engine technology ; the SR - 3 described by " Aviation Magazine " is similar to existing rocket - powered aircraft . Pulse Detonation Engine ( PDE ) technology , visually apparent by donuts - on - a - rope contrail - and audibly by its deep bass pulsing boom noise , has been associated with these programs from eyewitness accounts during the 1990s . In the late 1960s the North American Aircraft Corporation studied conceptual designs using the B - 70 bomber for small space launch of an X - 15 type rocket plane . These were abandoned as unpromising . What is known , and a matter of public record , is that , through the 1980s and 1990s , the USAF did undertake a series of projects to study , research , develop and test demonstrator vehicles capable of SSTO ( single - stage - to - orbit ) and TSTO ( two - stage - to - orbit ) missions . These programs were code - named , in order , SCIENCE DAWN , SCIENCE REALM , COPPER CANYON , and COPPER COAST , and involved the development of three different competitive demonstrator vehicles . It was at the conclusion of COPPER CANYON ' s design phase that President Reagan proposed the X - 30 NASP , which is claimed by the Blackstar story to have been used to pay for development of this spaceplane . 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 . Furthermore , three code - named programs to design the stealthing of these three vehicles fell under the programs known as HAVE BLINDERS I , HAVE BLINDERS II , and HAVE BLINDERS III . All of these programs can be found in US military budget documents , with associated budget account numbers for years in the 1980s up into the late 1990s in the case of COPPER COAST , though the code name was dropped from the account number in the mid - 1990s , even though many millions were budgeted up until recent years . Whether any of these vehicles were individually code named " BLACKSTAR " is unknown at this time . Blackswift . Details emerged in 2008 of an unmanned hypersonic platform called Blackswift , otherwise known as HTV - 3X or X - 43A , part of the DARPA Falcon Project . Computer - generated concept videos of the tests of this vehicle were made available by NASA / Lockheed Martin in June 2008 . May 2006 UK Defence report on " Black " aircraft sightings . In May 2006 , the British Ministry of Defence ( MoD ) released an extensive report on Unexplained Aerial Phenomena ( UAPs ) in the UK air defence area . It was written by the Defence Intelligence Staff in 2000 and was originally classified " SECRET UK eyes only " . One of the Working Papers is entitled " " BLACK " AND OTHER AIRCRAFT AS UAP EVENTS " . It says " it is acknowledged that some UAP sightings can be attributed to covert aircraft programmes " . The report lists three " Western " programmes which might result in this – all of which appear to be American . The first – not surprisingly – is the SR - 71 . Programme 2 and Programme 3 are redacted from the report – even their names are withheld . Two photos are also redacted . This was reported on June 14 , 2006 by BBC Newsnight . References . Miller , Jay . The X - Planes : X - 1 to X - 45 . Hinckley , UK : Midland , 2001 . Rose , Bill , 2008 . Secret Projects : Military Space Technology . Hinckley , England : Midland Publishing .