On Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:03:45 -0500, wrote:


Thought I saw that on a TV show. Could something else be flying? Maybe disguised
as satellite launches? Or would it be too difficult to hide a manned launch.

It's not totally impossible, but as the saying goes, "extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence." Sensationalist TV shows with
blurry lights in the night sky and distorted audio eyewitness
testimony just don't cut it.

The U.S. has large launch facilities (pads big enough to launch
rockets large enough to orbit an astronaut) only at Cape Canaveral,
Florida and Vandenberg AFB, California. Those launches are pretty well
all accounted for with the mundane communications and weather
satellites. Some are secret. We don't really know what's under the
nose cone of those rockets, but we do know that the NRO operates a
fleet of spy satellites, and those must be launched somewhere,
somehow. So all else being equal and the simplest explanation usually
being the correct one, those rockets launched spy satellites.

If such a secret space program exists, it would likely have to be an
air-launched system, probably operating from a base in the
inter-mountain west. A Boeing 747 or other large aircraft could
theoretically carry to altitude a small spacecraft launch vehicle,
like the Pegasus rocket. But a manned spacecraft is probably beyond
the theoretical capability of such a system. Prestigious magazines
such as Aviation Week have run speculative articles on such vehicles
(one derived from the old XB-70 supersonic bomber) but only in
connection with unmanned spacecraft (spy satellites) and even then,
few in the industry consider the story to be genuine.

Could the U.S. military be operating a secret manned space system?
Yes, of course it could. But why? All previous military manned space
programs (X-20 Dyna-Soar, Manned Orbiting Laboratory, military Shuttle
flights) were abandoned either for lack of mission or because unmanned
systems could do the job better and more cheaply. That hasn't changed.
It is enormously unlikely and there is absolutely no evidence to
support the existence of such a system.

Brian