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[Freddy]

Not sure if this speculation on a new technology fits here but what better place.

Did anyone catch that program last night about UFOs ?  I had seen it before, but I love stuff like that.

Project Aurora captured my imagination : Aurora

Anyone else interested in that ?

In my mind I am certain they will be working on something new, it's just who is the closest to guessing what it is.  There's some nice vapour trails that have been spotted that seem to show that an aircraft is using some kind of pulse engine to get to in excess of Mach 10.  Sounds very Star Trek doesn't it ?

But the thing is we never knew about Blackbird till years later and of course they want to keep it secret for as long as possible.

My coolest memory of aircraft sightings was when I was about 17 and we had bunked off of sixth form college.  We were supping on cans of shandy when there was this really loud noise above in the sky.  I looked up and could not believe my eyes - it was a SR-71 Blackbird cruising slowly through the sky.  I got a great look at it, I had never seen one flying before.  Amazing to me still today.

So, anyone else interested in this kind of thing ?

[Data]

In short  , I am very interested in it.

Didn’t see it last night, but I think I know the program you mean, I have it, or parts of it on my PC.

The best bits for me were the lifter, a technology that lifts things up and makes them float in the air using just electricity and it’s not done with magnets. (real technology, they demonstrated it on the program)  

And Aurora, a high altitude aircraft capable of travelling over 8000 MHP using a detonation pulse wave engine for propulsion. (speculative, unknown if its real or not, whoever reads this can decide that  )  

That must have been a bit of a shock seeing that SR-71 Blackbird, a good shock though.  

Can’t say that I’ve had any interesting sightings.

Shame   but  
 

[Freddy]

I think I was the only one of us that realised what it was haha.

Yes the lifter was amazing, you can find videos on YouTube about that.

When I first got the net I used to go through loads of sites on this kind of thing.  Kept me entertained for hours.

There was a remote chance me and a couple of friends saw a U2 one time as well, but I can't be sure as we didn't get a great view of it.  It was around dusk and we saw a slow moving continuous light in the sky.  Seemed almost to float towards us and slowly pass over head.  It was not an air frame I knew, my mate thought it was a U2, but visibility was not great.  I was surprised by how slow it seemed to be going.  It was definitely not a private plane or something like a Cesna.  The sound was more like a quiet jet, so I guess it was coasting.

Anyhoos, it might have been one as we get a lot of aircraft over Norfolk (a lot less now though) and Lakenheath isn't too far away.

The only other thing it could have been to my knowledge was maybe a slow moving Tank Buster (one of my favourite aircraft) as we used to get a lot of those.  But I saw enough of them so I would have thought I would recognise that immediately.

I have a good early UK Apache sighting too, but I will stop rambling for now.

[Snowcrash]

My wifi broacast is area51. Random thought.

I love UFO sightings but not the alien element to them. That's just bull to my mind.

There are loads of X craft. These are the ones that make it past first prototype. Other craft made at the Skunk Works have failed wildy. The SR71 (still the only titainium plane) was developed at the Skunk Works (I think) and was a fore runner to the stealth craft in service now. It is thought that the USA had the stealth planes (not sure if fighter or B2 or both) 10 years before Gulf war one when they had their revealing. The U2 ceiling is still classified but definitely 70,000 feet +

Venus and the ISS are very common UFO sightings.

And then there are UFO sightings that no one can explain... yet.

[Data]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgCXupNrwHM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgCXupNrwHM</a>

[Freddy]

Yes a lot of dead ends if you look back over the years.

Thanks for the video Data, that's taken from the program I mentioned.

With even the regular industries getting in on space travel (such as Virgin), there could be any number of things flying around up there.

[Data]

Dead ends and like Snowcrash said. Many of the sightings have been explained, some explained incorrectly, I still believe, with the use of misinformation. 

I have a better quality version of that video, was going to put it on Youtube but thought better of it.
It was an interesting program with a very levelheaded approach.

Think it was called UFOs: The Secret Evidence

[Snowcrash]

I'm sure these Aurora reports are about 15 years old. NASA/JPL were working on SCRAM jet engines (wiki here). These wouldn't leave the same contrails though. The pics of Aurora are very similar to the X43A. The contrails left are more like pulse jet engines (first used in the V1 doodlebug) but pulse jets are slower than RAM jets (the usual type on airliners and fighters).
I have seen designs for a three stage engine but it's fundamental problem was if they get a blow out at stage 3 it cannot relight the engine until it gets to stage 1 speeds (MACH 1-2) and it would've already hit the ground.

I've not seen any new reports. The main vehicle NASA/ USA military are playing with is the X37B which is an unmanned space plane. This has had 2 missions with hush hush payloads.

[DD1975]

At the time of it's retirement everyone said that the US must have a replacement for the the SR-71A, well we now know that drones were the US militarys way forward:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_RQ-170_Sentinel

However, there are many X type aircraft out there that we know about, and the US black budget for projects such as "Aurora" has been huge for the last few decades so who knows what else they came up with, and for that matter are still currently testing.

"The U2 ceiling is still classified but definitely 70,000 feet +" - I should hope so, the English Electric Canberra (world first jet bomber) set a world altitude record of 70+ thousand feet in 1957, and also still has a classified altitude ceiling! having only retired from the RAF 6 years ago!!!

[Snowcrash]

I knew Iran had captured a drone recently but I thought it was a Predator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator

But apparently it's a Sentinal.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16098562

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