Well I cant think of any myths so I'll just pop somthing up. If U never heard of an Aroura Bomber u might wanna skip this one. The Aroura is a supersonic bomber that goes at speeds of 10-12 mach so just tell me what ya think

Aurora is a secret project that costs a lot of money. That's all anyone who doesn't have the right security clearance knows about it. The only reason we know about it is that it accidentally showed up as a line item on a budget list before congress. When the mistake was caught, it was removed from the list and put back under the "black" budget where it belonged.

There is no evidence at all that Aurora is even a plane. The SR-71 was retired around that time, and there was no officially announced replacement for it, leading many to conclude that Aurora must be the SR-71's replacement. This is perhaps just wishful thinking on the part of fans of the SR-71. With Aurora's identity firmly confirmed as a spy plane in some folks minds (even though there is no evidence at all that it is even a plane) the next obvious step was wild speculation about its abilities. Obviously it must be better than the SR-71, but at the same time they want it to be the replacement for the SR-71, so most of the speculation you see is along the lines of "same thing, only better". The Aurora flies higher, has a longer range, and is faster than the SR-71.

All of this is just silly guesswork. There isn't a single scrap of evidence that indicates Aurora is even a plane. As such, wild speculation about Aurora is a topic that is probably better suited for the oogie boogie board.

typically the way these military research programs go is the public will find out about them in about 20-30 years when they are already well underway with Aurora's (whatever it actually is) replacement.

Another possiblity is "Aurora" is a deliberate misinformation ploy to draw attention away from another high cost project.

Airframe heating prohibits speeds much greater than Mach 3 in the atmosphere.
Mach 10 would be possible for operations near space, but.... manuvering at that speed is not practical. Even simple turns take 1000s of miles to complete.
Aurora may have been a program name 30 years ago, but there has never been any hardware that would do the fancy things claimed.

wouldnt somethin goin that fast burn up anyway

With modern materials, the speed is not an issue for such a vehicle to exist, particularly when considering that vehicles going into space in excess of 7 miles/sec (over 25,000 mph, or about Mach 33.97 at sea-level presuming dry air @ 273 kelvin). That's also considering that much of the material technologies for some things like the space shuttle or Saturn 5 rockets are based on 30+ year old technology.

The real problem of course comes down to practicalities. Such incredible speed is possible with extremely powerful rockets, however even SCRAM-jets like those of the X-43 have to have booster rockets to get up to an operable speed since they have such a pronounced "minimum speed" threshold to functionality. On top of that, their booster rocket has to be launched itself from a carrier plane, in effect a booster for the booster, and the final aircraft flying winds up being about the size of a dining room table. Definitely little, if any, great potential for a bomb payload seeing as the aircraft itself is smaller and lighter than many bombs.

In the end, the aurora is a fanciful pipe-dream from many of the same people who are self convinced that little green/grey men are "visiting them", because conspiracy and cover-ups where there simply are none make for good gossip among like minded people (see also mushy minded).

It struck me as funny that, while there are many highly intelligent people on this forum, we are being asked to judge the possibility of achieving something the best scientific minds of our nation supposedly are trying to achieve.

Damn, I hope we don't have to analyse the Unified Theory of Relativity next.

NASA put the alleged motor for the alleged Aurors on an SR-71, at Lockheed's Plant 10 in Palmdale.
Presumably the personnel available for the Aurora installation would have worked on the SR-71.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/history/pastprojects/SR71/Lasre/index.html
.
Note that when it came to actually running this thing in the air, NASA thought better of it.

Whoa whoa whoa, brakes applied vigorously!

Please know that the experiment of mounting an X33 mock up to the top of an SR-71 was in no way a final, or even truly fully-functional craft propulsion system, and at best an experiment that was abandoned. Second, the SR-71 was a conventional model in all respects save for having a giant craft-project mounted on the dorsal hull of it to test in real life the aerodynamics of a possible alternative to (or evolution of) space shuttles.

The propulsion system in no way what so ever was installed or applied on the SR-71, in addition, the X33 program used Aerospike engines, which to this day are simply not up to the task of delivering a workable aircraft anytime in the near future because of the sheer mechanical limitations resulting from its function. It's certainly a promising technology, but as with so many things it will take a significant amount of time for it to become a reality.

On top of all that, there's no connection between the X33 and a hypothetical Aurora, mostly because the Aurora doesn't exist which does wonders for explaining why there is no connection and why it certainly wouldn't work using that form of propulsion. The Aurora is still another "sounds good, but so does..." situation.

I'd bet the government would love to have a fleet of star ships orbiting earth piloted by captains that speak only in stilted syllables and who can always solve every problem with at least one second left before disaster (how convenient for all of us!), however until we've learned how to defend ourselves against the Vulcan neck pinch or Ricardo Montalbán (KHAN!!!), it's probably best that we focus on terrestrial technologies that are feasible.

I seem to recall there was also a Ramjet testbed built by Marquardt that was test flown on SR-71s. I also recall that it had a unfortunate tendency to melt. My single biggest question about the Aurora Myth is what's the point? Going faster than the Blackbird is going to just make the aircraft hotter and noisier. It would seem that the ideal would be a spy plane that you can't see or hear; I.E. Stealthy. I don't know how many of you have seen the video from the infrared tracking cameras they use for night reentries of the Shuttle, but the Shuttle lights up in infrared like Rudolf the Red-Nose Reindeer. You can see it several hundred miles away and you can hear the double sonic boom all the way across the continent when it is going at low supersonic speed. I have clearly heard it on a descending node landing when the ground track was 275 miles away. I would think you really want something like Global Hawk with very long range, quiet, Stealth , and no need for a pilot and all the attendant hassles of life support, ejection seats, pressure suits, lengthy O2 prebreaths, etc.

Kiaghi, isn't that a plotline from SG-1?

[quote]Mach 10 would be possible for operations near space, but.... manuvering at that speed is not practical. Even simple turns take 1000s of miles to complete.[/quote]

If you're going that fast, just don't turn. You'll be back where you started in about 2 hours anyway.

[quote]If you're going that fast, just don't turn. You'll be back where you started in about 2 hours anyway.[/quote]

As awesome as a Mach 10 plane would be, in reality, a better and more practical spy platform is a low and slow drone that can stay over the target for hours or even days on end. A slow-flying plane can take off from pretty much anywhere. A hypersonic plane needs a long runway in a very secure location. In addition to all the reasons dfez gave, a drone doesn't carry sensitive information. A pilot carries all kinds of secrets in his head.

It's just cheaper and much more practical to operate a slow, unmanned aircraft.

[quote]It's just cheaper and much more practical to operate a slow, unmanned aircraft.[/quote]

Or real time satelitte imagery, which greatly contributed to the SR-71 becoming obsolete as a spy plane.

[quote]Or real time satelitte imagery, which greatly contributed to the SR-71 becoming obsolete as a spy plane.[/quote]


The really interesting part is that the SR-71's were retired before the U-2's they were originally designed to "replace".

[quote]The really interesting part is that the SR-71's were retired before the U-2's they were originally designed to "replace".[/quote]

True, and the last I heard the U-2s will not be completely removed from service (recon) until 2011.

I am guessing U-2s are still used to cover areas when a satellite isn't available.

Global Hawk will be the final downfall of the U-2 as I understand it.