Blackstar Budget Line Item Found?

[simonbp]

rsp1202 - 3/7/2006  6:49 AM

First came across the name "Dreamland" in Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising." If Clancy was using it, my guess is it was being used by insiders, long before Hollywood discovered it.

Clancy has a habit of finding codewords and then proceding to completely misuse them. My father worked on towed sonar arrays back in the 1980's; he said he was greatly amused when Red October came out and misidentified several classified codewords he knew...

Simon

[bobthemonkey]

mlorrey - 3/7/2006  10:06 PM
The whole reason they burned the toxics at Groom was for operations and information security: they had no authorization to build a hazardous waste dump, and the EPA wouldn't let them classify their toxics documentation until after the Turley suit. If an enemy state keeping track of public records here notices a lot of kerosene-boron gel waste being shipped from Noplace, NV to EPA toxic waste sites, they are going to wonder what it is for, and thus start looking for who is producing the fuel in the first place (I know of a few companies still producing JP-7, JP-8, and JP-10 in large quantities even though there are no aircraft publicly known that use these fuels). An intel agent can discern a lot of things from logistics paperwork.

Isn't JP-8 standard jet fuel for most military aircraft, and JP-10 is used in missiles such as harpoon and tomahawk.

JP-7 is interesting it was boron containing iirc - used in the A12/SR71 program.

[mlorrey]

bobthemonkey - 3/7/2006  6:54 PM

mlorrey - 3/7/2006  10:06 PM
The whole reason they burned the toxics at Groom was for operations and information security: they had no authorization to build a hazardous waste dump, and the EPA wouldn't let them classify their toxics documentation until after the Turley suit. If an enemy state keeping track of public records here notices a lot of kerosene-boron gel waste being shipped from Noplace, NV to EPA toxic waste sites, they are going to wonder what it is for, and thus start looking for who is producing the fuel in the first place (I know of a few companies still producing JP-7, JP-8, and JP-10 in large quantities even though there are no aircraft publicly known that use these fuels). An intel agent can discern a lot of things from logistics paperwork.

Isn't JP-8 standard jet fuel for most military aircraft, and JP-10 is used in missiles such as harpoon and tomahawk.

JP-7 is interesting it was boron containing iirc - used in the A12/SR71 program.

It appears I was wrong here: while JP-4 was the standard military jet fuel up until the mid-1990's, the Air Force changed to JP-8 then due to greater thermal stability, and is now transitioning to JP-8+100 http://members.aol.com/afp1fire/jp-8.htm JP-8 is essentially Jet A-1.

JP-10 is dicyclopentadiene, and is allegedly used in ALCM cruise missiles as well as Harpoon, however other sources say the ALCM is fueled by JP-9. JP-10 extended the range of the ALCM by 20%. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/systems/engines-fuel.htm. JP-9 is also used to store extra F-16 aircraft in "flyable hold" status, preserving 85% of the fuel system.

Still other references claim that JP-7 was originally known as PF-1, yet some say that PF-1 is the fuel used in the ALCM.
http://dodssp.daps.dla.mil/dodiss/01nov_05.pdf (interestingly, this document lists Deuterium as a MIL standard propellant. What is it used as a propellant for? The only military use I know of outside of nuclear weapons is in the Tactical High Energy Laser)
USAF Fuels Directorate asserts JP-9 is the ALCM fuel.
http://afpet.ft-belvoir.af.mil/afpet/pdf/SFHistory.pdf

The X-37's AR-2/3 engine uses a mixture of JP-10 and hydrogen, exo-tetrahydro-cyclopentadiene
Zehe, M.J., and Jaffe, R.L., 2002, Quantum Chemical Calculation of Thermodynamics for Gas Phase Exo-tetrahydro-dicyclopentadiene (JP–10), to be published as a NASA TM, 2002.

Triethyleborane is used to ignite JP-7 in the SR-71's engines.

JP-TS is used in the U-2 and TR-1, has a very low freezing point and high thermal stability, which would lend it to high utility for hypersonic airbreathing apps that used the fuel to cool the airframe and intakes.

JP-6 was the fuel intended for the XB-70.

On a logistics note, the USAF fuels directorate says that one refinery,Exxon Baytown, Texas, supplied the 450 million gallons of JP-7 used by the SR-71 program over 24 years.

There are also two high density fuels, JP-8X and JP-11 which are referred to in international petroleum refinery documents. JP-8X is also referred to in documents describing the Space Operations Vehicle (SOV), which may be RP-2 (quadricyclane) or simply a similar high density fuel. There is an AIAA paper on advanced jet fuels that I can't access, which mentions these: "Properties and producibility of advanced jet fuels". T. Edwards, W. E. Harrison (USAF, Wright Lab., Wright-Patterson AFB, OH), and H. H. Schobert (Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park). AIAA-1997-2848. AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, 33rd, Seattle, WA, July 6-9, 1997


RP-2 is actually extremely low sulfur kerosene, not quadricyclane as globalsecurity.com claims.

Experiments in reducing or eliminating sulfur content show that the coking problem of hydrocarbons at high temp in engine plumbing is a function of sulphur content. http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/fuels/propane.html. For this reason, propane which has been pre-chilled seriously outperforms standard propane since the sulphur compounds are frozen out. This is particularly a problem for any private launch organization attempting a reusable launcher: the taggants and stenchants required by law are invariably sulphur compounds (are you paying attention, Blue Origin?).

Henry Spencer has looked at this as well:
""Hydrocarbon-Fuel/Copper
Combustion Chamber Liner Compatibility, Corrosion Prevention, and
Refurbishment", by Rosenberg, Gage, Homer, and Franklin.  It recaps the
earlier paper briefly, and adds some more.  Briefly:

Copper appears to catalyze "classical" coking of RP-1, because the threshold
temperature for it in their copper tests (about 600F) is considerably lower
than that seen in traditional hydrocarbon engines (which aren't copper).

The copper-sulfide deposits in sulfur corrosion are fairly pure Cu2S.

Mil-spec RP-1 can have up to 500ppm sulfur, 50ppm of it as mercaptans.
This is much too high, at least for copper engines.

After some experimenting with possible metals for surface coatings, they
settled on gold:  it's a relatively good match for copper in thermal
properties, and the technology for plating it onto copper is mature.  They
in fact had trouble getting good coatings -- the gold itself behaved well,
but the nickel layer underneath it, meant as a diffusion barrier, gave
difficulties -- but decided that what they had was adequate for early
testing.  It was quite successful; under conditions that clogged uncoated
channels badly, no deposits at all were seen in coated channels.

They also experimented with cleaning sulfide deposits out of channels.
Most cleaning agents either attacked the copper or didn't remove the
sulfide.  Dilute aqueous sodium cyanide (!) left the copper alone and
removed the sulfide quickly and completely.  However, the final surface is
rough and porous, and as you would expect, the result is slightly better
cooling performance at the price of slightly higher flow resistance.

The current DoD rocket-methane spec simply says "max 1ppm sulfur", and
this is not good enough.  Based on their experience, they suggest "max
0.1ppm H2S, max 0.2ppm mercaptan sulfur, max 0.5ppm total sulfur".

Bulk methane, even top grades, does not meet even the DoD spec, never
mind their suggested spec.  There was one exception, at the time they
did this work:  Quadren Cryogenic Processing sells bulk methane that
actually exceeds their spec, with total sulfur less than 0.1ppm."

[Norm Hartnett]

For you Blackstar fans.

Here is a propulsion system for you, note it is reusable.

http://sev.prnewswire.com/aerospace-defense/20060718/SFTU11218072006-1.html
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2005/05-062.html

That ought get the thing moving

[edkyle99]

Norm Hartnett - 19/7/2006  1:29 PM

For you Blackstar fans.

Here is a propulsion system for you, note it is reusable.

http://sev.prnewswire.com/aerospace-defense/20060718/SFTU11218072006-1.html
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/news/releases/2005/05-062.html

That ought get the thing moving

Here's another press release on the IPD.  It went "mainstage" for the first time at Stennis a few days ago.

http://www.pratt-whitney.com/pr_071906.asp

This thing must not be flight-weight (they say it is a demo that will never fly), because otherwise it appears to already do what NASA's years-down-the-road J-2X will do.

 - Ed Kyle

[meiza]

Has anyone estimated the man-hours one would save if this engine technology was used in space shuttle instead of the current SSME:s? Is it a significant saving in maintenance of the engines? Or is it too early to tell?
Of course the space shuttle will be retired before any upgrades, but it can give some data for the future reusable vehicles about what to do and what not to do.
There is some data about the cancelled Cobra engine http://www.astronautix.com/engines/cobra.htm which speaks about projections of 50 flights between maintenance, 100 flight life, 16 hour turnaround and less than 100 man hours per flight. With SSME turbopumps.

[hop]

Paper engines always outperform real ones. On paper at least.

edit: I realize that the engines in discussion aren't all paper, but they don't seem to be flight hardware either.

[Dana]

Jim - 3/7/2006  5:52 AM

Captain Scarlet - 3/7/2006  6:31 AM

vt_hokie - 2/7/2006  5:15 PM

I was always amazed (and saddened) by the reports of burning toxic materials in open pits at Groom Lake.  Couldn't they find some more responsible, common sense approach toward waste disposal?  I mean, come on...it doesn't take a Ph.D. to figure out that you shouldn't burn toxic waste in your backyard!

Groom Lake? Isn't that what they call Area 51? Or was that Hollywood giving it that name?

Area 51 was the name for the restricted (airspace?) area around Groom lake

The base is at Groom Dry Lake. Area 51 is an obsolete ID from the AEC maps that predated the base's construction for U-2 testing in the 1950s. The X-Files crowd latched onto that because it sounds mysterious and official; this also explains why the general area codename "RESTRICTED AREA FRENCHMAN" never caught on . Pilots and engineers often used to refer to it as "The Ranch." My airport guides from several years ago list the approach and control frequencies for nearby government airstrips such as Yucca Flats and Pahute Mesa as "Dreamland Approach." Since neither Yucca nor Pahute are listed as controlled airports, nor is anything else within about 50 miles, three guesses where Dreamland Approach is. The airspace over the base is Restricted Area R-4808N-that's Restricted, as opposed to an MOA. Most of the Nellis and Nevada Test Site airpace is Restricted. Here's a VFR sectional chart of the area:

[mlorrey]

IPD really isn't up to the sort of spec we are looking for. Firstly, it is a hydrogen burning engine, which is terrible because of the horrendously low density of H2, fuel tanks are huge. Blackstar's feasibility depends upon high energy density fuels, which H2 is not. Blackstar's fuel is almost certainly a kerosene slurried with boron, carbon, or aluminum nanoparticle powder. See Dr. Dunn's "Alternate SSTO Fuels" paper, and NASA HEDF project for more on these topics.

Particulate deposition on engine nozzles (as is often claimed with borane (not boron) based fuels) is unimportant if the nozzles are disposable ablating nozzles, like SpaceX's Merlin engine (where do you think SpaceX got that technology from?). Furthermore, deposition can be neutralized through the addition of either flourine to the LOX, or hydrazine to the fuel.

As for Groom Dry Lake: there are unit patches from the facility that use many of the popularly known referents. Base personnel take a bit of glee in weaving the popular mythology into graphics and such, all the better for the disinformation, eh? The only official documents that are commonly known and available on the web from the facility is a base security handbook describing the different security areas, including the fabled "S4" area. This documents validity was confirmed when the government, in a federal lawsuit against the government by base workers for OSHA and EPA violations (their attorney was Georgetown prof Jonathan Turley), sought to have the document suppressed and confiscated on grounds of national security (which they had no reason to do if it was fictional), while at the same time trying to insist it was fictional.

NOTE: the base workers were suing over health effects of open pit burning of boron-based compounds.... hint, hint....

[mlorrey]

Jim - 2/7/2006  4:37 PM

DC-Y is alot bigger than a ABM booster and slower as you said.  I could tell the difference between a Minuteman  and Altas launch visually from Los Angeles.

But going to orbit would use other assets for tracking and telemetery.  Even for the blackstar, if if went to orbit.  That is harder to hide.  All NRO spacecraft have to use them and the fact they are flying is not hidden.,

But look at who you are talking about, Jim: NRO, who is the alleged recon customer for the Blackstar. What makes you think they aren't covering up their own recon system?

[Jim]

NRO is not a customer.  The NRO is a provider.   They got out of the air recon systems decades ago.

[mlorrey]

According to the story, the vehicle was operated by a defense contractor, providing air recon to NRO. If it is an indirect NRO asset, then the NRO has an inherent self interest in not noticing any launch signatures, and, technically, you said "air recon systems". Blackstar is a space recon system.... nice choice of words.

[Jim]

NRO is not a user of data, they supply it.  So thecontractor would not supplying recon to the NRO

[josh_simonson]

>NOTE: the base workers were suing over health effects of open pit burning of boron-based compounds.... hint, hint....

Such as the boron composites that are common on military aircraft?  What do you do when you screw up a classified boron composite rudder?  Torch it...

[mlorrey]

Please name some military aircraft that commonly use boron composites... with cites.

[Jim]

can't they are classified

[kevin-rf]

But for $41.95 you to could buy a term paper titled  "Boron Composite Structures in Aviation" ... http://www.academon.com/lib/paper/5612.html

Sorry, this one was at the topof the google search... Boron Composites look quite common...

[vt_hokie]

mlorrey - 5/8/2006  2:36 PM

Please name some military aircraft that commonly use boron composites... with cites.

I think I remember reading that the B-1 bomber does.

[Dana]

mlorrey - 5/8/2006  11:36 AM

Please name some military aircraft that commonly use boron composites... with cites.

Aircraft applique armor: http://www.ceradyne.com/Products/Armor_Aircraft.asp

Quote: "The first major military production use of boron fiber was for the horizontal stabilizers on the Navy's F-14 Tomcat interceptor." 35+ years ago, man! http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Evolution_of_Technology/composites/Tech40.htm

Link with diagram of F-14 horizontal stabilizer materials: http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-detail-horizstab.htm

The F-15 (rudder skins- see http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_us/f015.html ) and Shuttle Orbiter (see http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/sts_coord.html ) also use 'em. Also the F-16. (see http://www.tpub.com/content/aviation/14014/css/14014_343.htm ) Even with the Tomcat out of service, you can't get much more "common" in the western world than the F-15 and F-16. All of these vehicles were designed in the late 1960s/early 1970s and the use of boron in composite structures has proliferated since then, although other materials have eclipsed it in recent years. It's also used in composite structure repairs.

http://www.specmaterials.com/applications.htm

[mlorrey]

Dana - 5/8/2006  7:27 PM

mlorrey - 5/8/2006  11:36 AM

Please name some military aircraft that commonly use boron composites... with cites.

Aircraft applique armor: http://www.ceradyne.com/Products/Armor_Aircraft.asp

Quote: "The first major military production use of boron fiber was for the horizontal stabilizers on the Navy's F-14 Tomcat interceptor." 35+ years ago, man! http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Evolution_of_Technology/composites/Tech40.htm

Link with diagram of F-14 horizontal stabilizer materials: http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-detail-horizstab.htm

The F-15 (rudder skins- see http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_us/f015.html ) and Shuttle Orbiter (see http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/sts_coord.html ) also use 'em. Also the F-16. (see http://www.tpub.com/content/aviation/14014/css/14014_343.htm ) Even with the Tomcat out of service, you can't get much more "common" in the western world than the F-15 and F-16. All of these vehicles were designed in the late 1960s/early 1970s and the use of boron in composite structures has proliferated since then, although other materials have eclipsed it in recent years. It's also used in composite structure repairs.

http://www.specmaterials.com/applications.htm

Now, how many of these were manufactured or maintained at Groom Lake? None.

BTW: I worked on the F-15. The horizontal stabilizers weren't classified. There would be no reason to dispose of airframe materials on Groom Lake for this aircraft, nor, if boron composites of the same sort were used in a classified aircraft at Groom Lake, would they need to be disposed of there, because, as you say, their use is rather common in airframe structural materials, ergo there is no operational security or other reasons to classify the production and disposal of waste of that nature. Nor are those particular types of boron composites all that great at burning.