Phil wrote in
ups.com:

On Oct 30, 11:08 am, Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote
:

Gatt wrote:
"Morgans" wrote in message
...

What he is hinting at is probably the Aurora. You know, the one
that leaves donut shaped con trails?

That's no longer with us, is it?

Well according to THE GOVERNMENT it never was. And the plane that
didn't/doesn't exist was supposed to be pulse jet.

Not quite. Though the principle is essentially the same, the engine
has not moving valve at the front. A pulse jet wouldn't be able for
supersonic, let alone hypersonic flight.
the inlet would have an annular inlet arranged so the flow would
direct each pulse down the rear of the engine, but there would be a
small efflux out of the annular inlet. The biggest advantage to this
system is that it's easily throttleable simply by varying the
frequency of the pulses. this thing almost certainly exists. More
than likely it's a development of the Convair Kingfish which was ,
like the A-12, an upshot of project GUSTO, but we're not going to be
told anytime soon! I read about the Kingfish years ago and can't find
anything decent about it on the net, but it was a parasite aircraft
with some sort of ramjet or zip engine that had a ceramic coating and
was capable of cruising at over mach 4. At least one of it's
designers has alluded to it actually having gone ahead, but it's
still a very black item.

Bertie

I think it's pretty likely that Kingfish (or Aurora or whatever they
actually called it) is flying. If I had to guess, I would say they
retired the SR-71 because it was old technology and because it was
vulnerable to newer generation anti-aircraft missiles. As far as the
secrecy surrounding the new aircraft, it is hard to see what would be
gained by making it public.



Also hard to see what could be gained by keeping it secret at this
stage. If one exists, any opposition knows about it. It's been in the UK
and you know how crap they are at keeping secrets. (One of them had a
close encounter with a Brittania airlines 767 in Manchester about ten
yars ago, though it could have been an F-117, of course)
in this day and age when sattelites can read licence plates and everyone
knows it you'd wonder why they would bother keeping it secret after all
these years for any reason other than habit.


Bertie