During the 1980's there was a lot of talk about the Space Shuttle, X-Planes, and commercial space travel.
This was before the theories surrounding the alleged "Aurora" experimental craft.
My father has worked in the aviation field since the 1960's, and one day he returned from a convention and gave me these promotional photos.
Of course, only one is an actual photo, the other two being artist's conceptions of what the new crafts would look like in operation.
I recently found them while looking through an old box of papers, and thought they were quite interesting.
I wonder what ever became of the mock-up of the experimental craft pictured here.
I wonder if it was ever more than a mock-up.
If any of you have any additional information regarding these, please contact us.
We would love to hear about it.
When I first posted this page and these pictures in 2002, there was very little information available about the x-planes.
Back then, Google only returned three results in my search for "x-plane" and only one of those was at all informative.
Thankfully there is more information available now. I've included some links at the bottom.
* * *
* * *
* * *
History of the X-Plane Program
The U.S. X-Plane Program has evolved from being the first rocket-powered airplane to break the sound barrier (the X-1 on OctoberÜ14, 1947) and included over 30 different major research designs, although not all were developed into flying prototypes (Hallion 1984, Miller 1988, DFRC/EAFB 1994-A/B, and DFRC/EAFB 1995). As the program progressed, other non-rocket-powered experimental aircraft were built and tested. These aircraft included: a range of vertical takeoff and horizontal landing vehicles; smaller, propeller-driven reconnaissance vehicles; and a series of unmanned missile testbeds of both single and multistage designs. Although the program grew to include conventional propeller-driven aircraft, all designs had in common the aspect of being highly valuable research tools for advancement of aerodynamics and astronautics.
X-30 NASP: The National Aero Space Plane
As a part of a five-company team, Pratt & Whitney is pursuing and refining propulsion technologies for the National Aero-Space Plane (NASP). Designated X-30, this huge aircraft will operate from conventional airfields on Earth and fly at hypersonic speeds _ up to Mach 25 or Mach 30 (15,000 to 17,000 miles per hour) _ and be capable of achieving low Earth orbit.
Secret American Space Planes to Dominate Planet Earth
The USA has been working on secret, new-generation space planes
In the beginning of the 1990s, Russian intelligence uncovered the fact that the USA was testing a super-secret plane at one of its airbases. Russian agents attempted to see the new object with their own eyes and take pictures of it, but all attempts failed. The Americans provided incredible security for their secret weapon, and they tested the plane only at night. However, Russian agents managed to get some information about the new plane, which the USA calls Aurora, in honor of the Goddess of the Dawn.
Aircraft Museum - Aurora
The name "Aurora" first appeared in a 1985 budget document with a line by that name slated to receive $80 million in FY 1986 and $2.2 billion in FY 1987. Since the item appeared just after the TR-1, many conjectured that this project was a high-speed aircraft to replace the SR-71. As early as 1979, the Air Force had begun studying a "...Mach 4, 200,000-ft.-altitude aircraft that could be a follow-on to the Lockheed SR-71 strategic reconnaissance vehicle in the 1990s."
Aurora
The 1986 US Federal Budget had a single line item for the department of defense labeled simply “AURORA”, with an 80 million-dollar price tag, and a projected 2.3 billion-dollar price tag the following year. According to the Department of Defense, the item appeared by mistake, and it has never resurfaced in public funding requests. Aircraft industry watchers soon began hypothesizing that Aurora was the code name for a top secret aircraft being developed by the famous Lockheed Martin Skunkworks - the same aerospace think tank responsible for the U-2 Spy Plane, SR-71 reconnaissance plane (fastest declassified aircraft in the world), X-32, F-22 fighter, Sea Shadow stealth boat, and F-117 Stealth Fighter.
The connection makes sense. Aurora was the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn (known as Eos in Greek mythology) who was responsible for setting the stars in the sky at night. Lockheed’s black budget recon programs have had similarly themed names in the past. The SR-71 (actually it was the RS-71, until President Lyndon Johnson reversed the letters when announcing it and Lockheed changed the name to match) was code named Oxcart (the European name for the Big Dipper). The A-12, the plane on which the SR-71 was based, was referred to as Cygnus, after the swan constellation, while the U-2 was called Isis after the Egyptian goddess.
