Secret Projects: Military Space Technology

[Vahe231991]

I have a copy of a book in the "Secret Projects" series about military spacecraft projects titled Secret Projects: Military Space Technology, written by Bill Rose, and it can be purchased online at this link:
https://www.amazon.com/SECRET-PROJECTS-MILITARY-SPACE-TECHNOLOGY/dp/1857802969

This book talks about the different design studies for military spacecraft, ranging from the Eugen Sanger's Silbervogel suborbital bomber to the Manned Orbital Laboratory and X-20 Dynasoar to anti-satellite missiles to a gigantic troop transport spacecraft. The table of contents for this book can be summed up as follows:

Introduction (including acknowledgements)
Chapter 1: German Wartime Ambitions
Chapter 2: British Space Ambitions
Chapter 3: US Projects
Chapter 4: Aurora, Myth or Reality?
Chapter 5: Soviet Military Space Programmes
Chapter 6: Nuclear Propulsion
Chapter 7: Destination Moon
Glossary
Index

Although Chapter 4 is in some ways outside the scope of this book because the first few pages of that chapter deal with the legend surrounding a supposed hypersonic spyplane that was called "Aurora" in many popular and semi-technical works, it also deals with rumors of carrier aircraft-launched reconnaissance spaceplanes while discussing proposals and patents for military TSTO spaceplanes because the rumors about the existence of the alleged Blackstar TSTO system discussed in a March 2006 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology were as tantalizing as reports of the supposed "Aurora" spyplane. Whereas the reactivation of the SR-71 in the mid-1990s cast doubt on suggestions by black aircraft experts that the Pentagon was not telling the truth about "Aurora" because it suggested that the SR-71 was initially retired for economic reasons and that whatever aircraft was called "Aurora" by Bill Sweetman and some of his ilk may have been merely a technology demonstrator (a memoir published by Ben Rich shortly before his death in 1995 revealed that the Pentagon used the name Aurora as the codename for funding B-2 procurement), the odds that the Blackstar and other rumored military TSTO systems existed in the 1990s is close to nil because of the technical challenges and staggering costs associated with creating a huge carrier aircraft for a manned orbital spyplane. Indeed, the late Curtis Peebles wrote on his book Dark Eagles that rumors of a XB-70 like carrier aircraft called "Brilliant Buzzard" in some publications in the 1990s were based on misidentified Rutan Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft and a radar cross section test article, and the very William Scott who wrote the report about the non-existent Blackstar TSTO system also wrote reports in the early 1990s about the non-existent Black Manta tactical reconnaissance flying wing.

There are a few errors in the book that should be pointed out:
- COPPER COAST was not connected in anyway to COPPER CANYON (forerunner of the X-30/NASP program) and is the codename of a USAF tactical evaluation and analysis program that is still active
- The ramjet-powered aircraft shown in a 3-view drawing on page 35 is actually the DFS Strahljäger and not the Skoda-Kauba P.14, even though the Strahljäger was a ramjet-powered project like the P.14
- The Douglas design submission for the X-15 competition that is known in some books as "Skyflash" actually bore the company designation D-684, not D-671; the true D-671 was a Navy-funded proposal for an enlarged D-558-2 Skyrocket and predated the D-684, which was less ambitious than the D-671 in terms of design altitude and designed on behalf of NACA like the Bell, Republic, and North American Aviation submissions to the X-15 competition
- The deep-bodied spaceplane designs captioned by Rose as being McDonnell Douglas submissions to the Isinglass program are actually the McDonnell Douglas Incremental Growth Vehicle hypersonic research aircraft project of the early 1970s and had nothing to do with Isinglass
- The isosceles triangle-shaped aircraft captioned on page 133 as being the Hypersonic Glide Vehicle is actually the McDonnell Model 192 design study conceived as part of the CIA's Project Isinglass for an air-launched hypersonic rocket-powered spyplane, not the HGV
- The mockup shown at the bottom on page 35 is of the Pfeil Flugzeug interceptor conceived by Mario Zippermayr (see Secret Projects forum), not the Silbervogel
- The Siebel factory in Halle that was working on the DFS 346 was actually captured by US Army units a few days before Hitler's suicide, and was not handed over to Soviet control until July 1, 1945, after which the DFS 346 program was continued under Soviet military supervision