New Spy Plane on the Drawing Board

Courtesy Google Images

Fans of Marvel Comics’ X-Men are familiar with the team’s SR-71 Blackbird. However, marvel-movies.wikia.com surmises that movie franchise dropped the term Blackbird in favor of the X-Jet. X-MEN FILMS speculates that the X-Jet will make an appearance in X-Men: Days of Future Past due out in May, 2014.

When I was a kid, I didn’t realize the Blackbird was a real plane. I just thought it looked really cool!

The Blackbird is an actual stealth aircraft developed by Lockheed Martin. According to Lockheed Martin.com, the Blackbird (so named because it was painted black to help dissipate heat) was conceived by a team of developers at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works® in Burbank,California.

The first iteration of the Blackbird is the A-12 which had its maiden flight on April 30, 1962.

The next production model Blackbird is the SR-71 whose maiden flight was December 22, 1964.

SR-71 Courtesy Google Images

According to U2SR71Patches.co, the Blackbirds operated out of Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan from March 9, 1968 to January 21, 1990. When I was stationed in Japan in 1982 I never had an opportunity to view an SR-71 up close. But the locals always seemed to know when a bird was preparing for takeoff. Many Japanese lined the outer perimeter of the runway, off base property, and photographed a plane as it launched.

SR -71.org says the SR-71 had its final flight in October 1999.

Skunk Works® is in the process of developing the next generation of spy plane, and you know what? It looks really cool!

SR-72 Courtesy Google Images

Lockheed has dubbed the plane the SR-72. ExtremeTech.com reports that conceptually, it will about 100 feet long, unpiloted, and reach an altitude of 80,000 feet. It will be capable of traveling at 4,567 miles per hour—Mach 6, or six times the speed of sound. Holy crap! That’s faster than anything that isn’t attached to a rocket.

I can envision the military applications. The obvious use being aerial reconnaissance. ExtremeTech.com states that if the SR-72 were deployed aboard aircraft carriers, we’d have what would essentially be a giant drone that could provide surveillance of any part of the world in about an hour. The technology used to propel the SR-72 has the capability of reaching Mach 10 (7,612 miles per hour). The website also reports that Lockheed hasn’t secured funding, but still hopes to have one built for test by 2030.

I wonder if there are commercial applications. Imagine getting from Los Angeles to New York in about 30 minutes … that … would be cool!

What do you think? What applications are there for a craft that can travel at Mach 6 and beyond? Is it possible an SR-72 will replace the SR-71 X-Jet in future X-Men movies?

SpaceX – A New Era in Space Travel

There are a number of nations (e.g., the United States, Russia, China, India and Japan) that have satellites in orbit. Only a few nations have demonstrated the ability to launch spacecraft (Russia, the United States, the European Union, China, Japan, and India).

One sovereign nation, North Korea, has made three failed attempts (2006, 2009 and most recently April, 13, 2012) to launch weather satellites. The suspicion is that these launch attempts are thinly veiled tests of a ballistic missile delivery system.



Courtesy Google Images

Therefore, when SpaceX sent a cargo capsule, the Dragon, that docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, May 25, 2012, they accomplished something that no other private citizen had—build a spacecraft that docked with the ISS. I think it’s remarkable that they achieved this feat in just ten years.

There are other competitors in the commercial space realm. According to the Washington Post there are five other company’s which may be close to following SpaceX into orbit.


· Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Virginia
· Alliant Techsystems, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia
· Boeing Co. of Chicago, Illinois
· The Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nevada
· Blue Origin of Kent, Washington

SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, the creator of PayPal, in 2002. SpaceX’s COTS 2 Mission Press Kit states that Musk’s vision was to eventually make it possible for people to live on other planets.

What do you think? Is this the first step toward commercialization of space?

Photos: http://spacexlaunch.zenfolio.com/

Videos: http://vimeo.com/spacexlaunch

Asteroid Mining

In 1848, at Sutter’s Creek, California, gold dust was discovered and the rush for gold was on. Within a year, 100,000 people migrated to California with the hope of striking it rich. In 1896, Rabbit Creek, in the Klondike Valley of the Yukon Territories was the scene of another golden discovery. According to The Last Best West, a prospector found a gold nugget and the ensuing Klondike Gold Rush drew 100,000 pilgrims to the gold fields of Canada.

Courtesy Google Images

In May, 2003, the Japanese launched a meteor probe named Hayabusa. It collected granules of meteoroid dust from the asteroid Itokawa and returned to earth with its space dust in June, 2010.

I think this mission was important for a couple of reasons. It gave scientists a glimpse of the composition of an asteroid and it proved that a space craft could land on and return from an asteroid. In 2016, NASA plans to send an unmanned rocket to an asteroid. The Telegraph reports that astronauts have begun training for a manned mission to an asteroid.

The significance to the gold rush? Asteroids could contain a host of precious metals and a group of business people have proposed mining asteroids. ABC News reports that Planetary Resources, Inc has a vision of collecting precious metals and water from space. Co-founder Eric Anderson said, "If you believe it's important to have continued prosperity for future generations, we need resources from somewhere."

The proposition won’t be cheap but these folks have the backing of some high rollers such as Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google and Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman.

I think it would be cool to mine asteroids; as long as we don't abandon manned space flight. What do you think; will this lead to a rush for metal ores in the great vacuum of space?

Japan's Spy Satellite

Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun.  I was on an extended deployment in the summer and early fall of 1981, a bit over seven months.  The squadron I was attached to, VMA 223, was fulfilling our portion of a three-squadron rotation.

We were assigned to Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Iwakuni, Japan.  The most lasting memory I have of Iwakuni is the smell of smoldering flesh.  There was a crematorium in the town and on Thursdays they burned the bodies.  That is an odor that will forever be imprinted on my olfactory system.  YUCK!

I was very young and did not understand the opportunity I had to explore a country with such a rich history.  I managed to spend a day in Hiroshima.  I don’t recollect much and I don’t think I took many pictures.  I mostly remember two things:

1.    It was the first time I had seen the brightly colored koi fish.

2.    There was a McDonalds in Hiroshima and this offered a little taste of home.

I did see some of the land though.  We lost an airplane (the pilot ejected safely) and I was one of the many assigned with searching for missing pieces.  Four of us trudged through a rice paddy and then there were three of us.  One of our party had fallen into a hole that had been covered up.  He didn't get hurt but it took us a few minutes to extricate him.

Why do I reminisce about this short tour of duty?  I was thinking about Japan on Monday, December 12, 2011, because the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a spy satellite.  I didn’t know the Japanese had spy satellites.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; I knew they had this capability since they are partners on the International Space Station.  I just never thought of Japan as having a need for spy satellites.  They started this effort in the late 90s after North Korea fired a missile over Japan.

This isn’t even their first spy satellite; it’s their seventh launch since 2003.  This satellite is radar tipped which, when operational, will allow the Japanese to monitor ground conditions at night or through cloud cover.  The need to monitor their own landmasses became especially crucial following the tsunami and earthquake in March, 2011.

I have a military background and I’ve worked in the aerospace industry for over 25 years, yet I never thought of Japan as requiring spy satellites.  When I ponder those who might be monitoring from above I don’t think of Japan but rather Russia, China and the U.S.  But, I guess I’m going to have to alter my world view and realize that the Big Three don’t have a monopoly on the sky.  Is Big Brother watching?