Saturday
(0)For the last couple years many pundits have expected a black aircraft to have a coming out party "Real Soon Now". It has finally happened but the new debutante is not at all what anyone expected.
It's neat looking but only a technology demonstrator. Slow, low ceiling... and very hard to detect.
Personally I think there are a few other rather more interesting craft still in the deep, deep black of Groom Lake.
Yes it is. May all the assembled gods of liberty and low taxation forgive me, but I do love these photos of spooky spiky aeroplanes that the Americans are so good at making just now.
They always bring to mind for me that piece by P. J. O'Rourke when he has a day out on a US Navy battleship and sees the officers playing with all the controls and he says: This is how to waste public money!
And talking of wasting public money on aeroplanes, I think that Concorde is also very pretty, still. I missed it dreadfully when they had that crash in Paris and it was taken out of service for about a year.
Posted by Brian Micklethwait at October 26, 2002 09:05 PM
Want to see some really cool aircraft paid for entirely by private enterprise, including prototype spaceplanes? Check out XCOR Aerospace in Mojave, California.
Last year, on the way to a course at Front Sight in neighboring Nevada, I stopped at XCOR's offices on the field and was graciously granted a couple of hours close examination of a flying testbed, the EZ-Rocket.
I took quite a bit of digicam footage of the hangared plane and of Doug Jones, XCOR's friendly self-described "Rocket Plumber". I could be convinced to post some photos, if anyone's interested.
Posted by Russell Whitaker at October 26, 2002 11:16 PM
You have no idea how deep the spacer connections go :-)
Yes, we'd be happy to put up pics and downloadable video. I can't really put a video server up though as I think that would be pushing things a little with the deal I have at the ISP...
And btw, see if you can pick out Aleta Jackson here. (Warning 650K). I don't think I have anything of Doug that far back, but you can find things he wrote in the 80's here although I can't tell you when he started being a regular poster, and the yearly archive files are humongous!.
Oh yeah. That's all t on this very server where we sit. Welcome to the space mafia :-)
Posted by Dale amon at October 27, 2002 01:29 AM
BTW: check the archive for aerospace stories. I've been "covering them like a rug".
Posted by Dale Amon at October 27, 2002 01:35 AM
Now that's what I all a recreational vehicle!
Posted by Alan K. Henderson at October 27, 2002 07:15 AM
I wonder how many other folks have figured out why its' called the Bird of Prey? I certainly got a chuckle when I "got it".
Posted by Dale Amon at October 27, 2002 09:51 PM
Just for the historical record (should anyone ever give a damn), I meant in my comment above "on the way back from" Front Sight.
Here's a followup I wrote yesterday about my visit to XCOR, by the way (the photos I'd promised in October 2002 of the September 2001 visit).
Posted by Russell Whitaker at February 2, 2003 10:34 PM
