Aurora (aircraft)

Aurora (also: " Project Aurora ", " senior citizen ", " senior smart ") is the alleged code name of a U.S. reconnaissance plane hyper sound enabled. Although there was no confirmation from official sources, it has been speculated by various media and professional journals on a plane project with this name since the 1980s. So far, Aurora is regarded as a myth.

Documented history

The only documented mention of the name " Aurora " is contained in a planning paper the Pentagon in February 1985 in which the provision is listed of 80 million U.S. $ for an air-breathing reconnaissance program for the fiscal year 1986. According to the same paper, the funding should be increased to 2.27 billion U.S. $ by 1987. Whether this was actually implemented, is not detectable because the project Aurora was not mentioned in any other non-secret document. It remains unclear whether the budget were ever intended for the development of a new aircraft.

The United States Air Force denied a project Aurora and spoke only of an additional cost center, which was intended for the then secret Northrop B-2 later.

Speculation

In the late 1980s has been suggested in the press that the Aurora was designed by the Skunk Works successor to the Lockheed SR -71 reconnaissance aircraft. The speculation about the attainable speed ranged up to Mach eight and a service ceiling of 30,000 meters ( 100,000 feet ). The most likely form of construction of the Aurora, the interpretation is often postulated as a flying wing, but these are represented in different variations.

It has been repeatedly speculated that prototype in flight testing were; This has brought but still only unconfirmed eyewitness accounts. The cipher " Aurora " refers to a number of sightings of experimental aircraft, unidentified aircraft, radio messages and atypical contrails, which were interpreted as evidence for the existence of a hypersonic aircraft.

Ufologists and conspiracy theorists mention Aurora occasionally and speculate on a deployment in the Area 51