Aurora Project
 

Apologies if this subject is in the wrong forum (ie pPruNe), but is there any hard evidence the Aurora Project existed? If so, what happened to it?
Also, are there any genuine ufo stories? (by genuine, I mean genuinely unexplainable).
I should say I am a committed skeptic.

ET Thing black triangle UFO etc
 

was not this an ET Type Yank thing flying around a Scottish Airfield so the storys went HYPERSONIC UFO style . GOOGLE has plenty#

Aurora Project Hypersonic Aircraft

and on UTUBE
YouTube - Project Aurora - The Flying Triangle UFO?

One story had an Airfield that disappeared under ground after every
flight NO doubt swept by Nessie near Macrenhenish

so over to the Experts

Tony

Thanks, Tony
 

I am quite happy for the mods to remove this thread if they feel it is inappropriate.
I have see the stuff on youtube.
I was hopng, since this is a more serious forum, that there might be something that is a little more genuine that pilots or spotters had actually seen
Regards,
shark

Serious thing
 

All theses UFO And things on line and in books seem to be more Funny
than serious sorry if sounded sceptical over this one but it was around
for Years not much known about Truth. Something we know is out there
but the Yanks will never Admit it . Where we are FARNBOROUGH many
years ago there were UFO sightings over The RAE and mil areas all
were hushed up until recently but parts of those files were removed
Same i suspect this project there might have been something out there
but the many story's were positively Silly at times . Recent Sightings
of UFO Over UK Very interesting but made look stupid cos it was in
the SUN

Tony

I am no great lover of conspiracy theories but this clip on youtube was interesting.

YouTube - secret aurora plane trail filmed

In what ways are vapour trails that look like that generated?

Gulf - did you mean Machrihanish - or were you being deliberately obtuse?

Just out of interest why is Machrihanish not put to good use now? It has a nice long runway but from what i've heard very little flies in and out of there.

sorry
 

hi

Should have looked the correct spelling for that .Sorry

Tony

Will someone please explain the fuss about these "mystery" contrails" I flown across the pond behind and below other aircraft often enough to see all sorts of funnies, usually caused by a whole host of either meteorological phenomonem, or just interaction with jetwash or vortices.... I've even seen the "pulse jet" contrail much loved by the conspiracy theorists, trouble was it's always attached to something mundane like a 757, 767 or 747, etc etc...and I really can't see why the contrail in the youtube link is regarded as anything out of the ordinary.

As for Aurora concept itself, lets see, I've got keyhole satellites that have got resolution we here can only dream of, and if I really want to do stealthy fixed wing recon I'm sure it's easier to design some sort of recon package that would fit into the weapons bay of a the likes of the F-117 or the B2 than design something that goes booming along at Mach 5 plus.

I do believe in UFOs, in that people do see things they can't explain or identify, I don't I don't believe in Flying saucers, but I do believe in Machrihanish:}

From the horses mouth, so to speak

Ben Rich, former head of Skunk Works and lead designer of the U2, SR-71, F-117........etc

"The funding for the competition [between Lockheed/Rockwell and Northrop/Boeing to build a stealthy, long-range successor to the B-1 bomber] came out of a secret stash in the Air Force budget. A young colonel working in the Air Force "black program" office at the Pentagon, named Buz Carpenter, arbitrarily assigned the funding the codename Aurora. Somehow this name leaked out during congressional appropriations hearings, the media picked up the Aurora item in the budget, and the rumor surfaced that it was a top secret project assigned to the Skunk Works - to build Americas first hypersonic airplane. That story persists to this day even though Aurora was the code name for the B-2 competition funding. Although I expect few in the media to believe me, there is no code name for the hypersonic plane, because it simply does not exist."

And earlier in that chapter;

"....during one very slack period in the mid-1980's, the Reagan administration was ready to sign up the Skunk Works on a three-year feasibility study for developing a hypersonic plane, which, by definition, mean a aircraft capable of flying faster than five times the speed of sound. The Reagan science advisors were proposing an airplane that flew at Mach 12 and offered me a million dollars per Mach number to show how it could be done. The trouble was that I couldn't design such a vehicle if they offered me 12 billion. That project was nothing but a simple-minded boondoggle from start to finish."

This book is 13 years old but, Ben Rich was a pioneer of building Stealth aircraft, and was largely responsible for the SR-71's staggering performance, described as being 30 years ahead of its time. I doubt such a plane is even possible using conventional means, I guess that's not to say that there aren't new breakthroughs in technology since then...

Great book by the way, tells the mind-blowing story of the development and use of the SR-71, F-117, U2 aircraft, as well as snippets like the test pilot sent into the desert in a Cessna to find a suitable site for testing secret aircraft projects, say a dry-lake bed for instance, where Skunk Works did their test flights, during which all personnel on the airbase were told to go inside their windowless offices as these aircraft were so top-secret at the time.

Amazon.co.uk: Skunk Works: Ben R. Rich, Leo Janos: Books

A little more on the Aurora and a lot more on Machrihanish.

RAF Machrihanish

Yes, I made a point today to check out the contrails that got left as we headed toward dusk.. and more than one exhibited this "doughnuts on a rope" effect..

Unless there were lots of Auroras (Aurorae?) flying about :)

The truth is out there.
 

In the early 90’s, I was in Dunbar (Scotland) looking out to the North Sea while on holiday in August. In the bright sunlight I saw a aircraft that looked like the space shuttle flying at low level at some distance.

It had 5 engines mounted in the tail, 1 at the top, 2 in the middle and 3 at the bottom.

I asked my son’s who were with me, if they had also seen it. Alas they all missed it.

During the winter that year, one of the national papers on a Saturday (Daily Mail or Express) had a report of a strange aircraft being sighted by a oil rig worker, who was also a part time member of the Royal Observer Corps. The line drawing that was with the report was 100% what I had seen. I believe that the same drawing was published in Flight International.

I have tried to find a copy of the newspaper , with no luck so far.

If anyone has a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about aircraft from the early 1990’s. Please have a look to see if a you have a copy of the drawing.

Do not publish it on the web, as it may still have copyright on it. Just put a note here, that it has been found.

As they say on the X files. The truth is out there.

I used to work up there at the time the wokka went down and one of our guys had a farmhouse next to the Machrihanish perimeter. He swore that something was going on in there in the 80's and early 90s and that he had often heard an unidentifiable engined plane taking off in the early hours when foggy, but that the noise (which was unlike a normal turbine) was lost in seconds as though it had accelerated out to sea at great speed.

Others up there reported strange activity with navy seals seen on the road off the base , however as the yanks were in and out of there, anything was possible (it even had a bowling alley)
I dont doubt that F117s also went in and out of there pre-public unveiling and were responsible for many UFO reports in the North of scotland
If you wanted a base away form prying eyes with no land to fly across to get to remote parts of North America, the Mull has it.
There were even rumours in the town at the time from local coast guard of American personel on scene at the Wokka before any other services arrived there and they all b!!! off staright away. The base was then mothballed in the next few months with the yanks pulling out.
however it could all be overactive imagination in a very remote but scenic place
who knows

Er, how does that make 5???
Perhaps it was the Space Shuttle and used as a faster way to get US oil workers to and from the rigs??
Do we have any conclusive proof that other known aircraft or airliners leave these donut on a rope contrails, distinctive noise etc??

try google Images
 

hi

very interesting place funny how one name gets mentioned and
Everyone Seems to know about . Did or does something still go
on there we might never know . Found this as well

http://www.geocities.com/yoda448/area51/aurora.gif

Tony

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/6...0052cz9.th.jpghttp://img521.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif

Rubbish pic but taken by myself today at about 6pm. I was near Wycombe, so assume it was something flying over the London TMA.

Now it could have been a coincidence and been Aurora.... I'll have to check the heathrow webtrak tomorrow afternoon! :p

Aurora does not exist!
 

I suppose I was rather hoping the Aurora did exist- perhaps a development of something like the X-33:
Lockheed Martin X-33 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Also, the space shuttle orbits at 17,000mph,which could point to another high speed craft, but since it slows considerably on re-entry (down to the speed of a conventional airliner I believe), I guess the Aurora is just another myth.
EGLD's quote:That story persists to this day even though Aurora was the code name for the B-2 competition funding. Although I expect few in the media to believe me, there is no code name for the hypersonic plane, because it simply does not exist.", and oversteers observations of "donuts on a rope contrails" with conventional craft, seem pretty conclusive to me.
The aurora does nor exist.
Pity, really.
Thanks for all your replies.
shark

About 10 years ago i was in a nightclub in Swindon talking to a B1 bomber crew, and eventually the conversation got round to the Aurora.

"Sir, i don't know what your talking about" drunken burp and slur....

"But that thing goes so fast it takes 3 US states to turn 180 degrees in"

My maths
 

Sorry, not good at maths. It should have been six engines.

If anyone can remember the newspaper item and drawing, let us all know.