Message posted by Vahe Demirjian (Member since 04/28/2022) on November 05, 2023 at 16:50:58 PST:
The Western Museum of Flight, March Field Air Museum, National US Air Force Museum, and National Air and Space Museum ought to sell copies of your book "Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51" in their bookstores because: (1) this work publishes for the first time many hitherto-unpublished photos and video clips of the TSSAM during flight tests; (2) a history of the Quartz program is provided in extensive detail for the first time based on information provided by journal articles and interviews with people involved with the Quartz project cited in the 2010 monograph about unmanned air vehicles for the US Air Force; and (3) veteran Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin employees who worked on NG and LM SensorCraft design studies and Air Force personnel involved in preparing "RQ-180" EMD aircraft for flight testing in 2010 to 2015 as well as the staff at the WMoF will find it convenient to share with each other details in your new book about the "RQ-180" flight test program and the NG SensorCraft design studies that led to development of the "RQ-180". When staff volunteers at the Western Museum of Flight and March Field Air Museum receive copies of this book, they can explain to hypersonic aviation gurus that even though the codename Aurora was mentioned in the February 1985 Pentagon budget document above the funding line item for the U-2 and TR-1 (which led to the mistaken belief that Aurora had been applied to a hypersonic follow-on to the SR-71), it was actually allocated to requested funding for procurement of the B-2 Spirit to easily conceal the expected rising costs of the B-2 program. I'm sure some staff volunteers at those museums at first had difficulty digesting the revelation by Ben Rich in his 1994 memoir about Aurora being a line item for procurement of the B-2 bomber because that revelation begged the question of whether the "skyquakes" and triangular aircraft sightings in the late 1980s and early 1990s had anything to do with a classified hypersonic replacement with the SR-71, but eventually came to agree with the remarks by Ben Rich about Aurora being a line item for requested funding of the B-2 procurement after seeing flight tests of the X-43 and X-51 come and go but also getting to know more about 1970s and 1980s design studies for hypersonic reconnaissance aircraft by aerospace companies in southern California.
In Reply to: Re: Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51 by Peter Merlin posted by Peter Merlin on October 29, 2023 at 15:59:52 PST:
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