Aurora aircraft
Aurora is the popular name for an alleged secret American reconnaissance aircraft, believed to be capable of hypersonic flight at speeds of Mach 5 or greater. Many believe that the Aurora was developed in the 1980s or 1990s as a replacement for the aging and expensive SR-71 Blackbird. If they have entered production, these aircraft might be based at the secret government airbase Groom Lake (Area 51) in Nevada, as well as Edwards AFB, California, and Machrihanish, Scotland (Machrihanish is now under 'care and maintenance' meaning it is no longer in use by the military on a full time basis. However, the base remains available for commercial use and on occasion is used by the military for peacetime excersises. In war time Machrihanish would revert to the status of a fully operational military airbase). While the United States government denies Aurora's existence, a number of people have pieced together sketchy evidence to the contrary. More recently, interest in Aurora has waned, and military aircraft enthusiasts generally regard it as non-existent.The strongest source in favor of the existence of Aurora lies in a possible eyewitness and trained aircraft spotter named Chris Gibson. In 1989, while working as an engineer on a North Sea oil platform, he saw an unfamiliar triangle-shaped vehicle and drew a picture of it. This was followed shortly thereafter by a photograph circulated on the Internet showing such an aircraft being escorted into Machrihanish by two F-111s. The photograph was clearly a fake, but the association with Machrihanish has remained to this day. Additional evidence comes from several unexplained sonic booms that occurred over California (especially Los Angeles) and Nevada in the 1990s, possibly created by Aurora aircraft heading to or from the Groom Lake air base. Finally, in 1998, another aircraft spotter videotaped two unusual contrails in quick succession. One of the sights appeared to be a fireball, while the other was described as "doughnuts on a rope." However, this latter bit of evidence is particularly shaky, as this sort of contrail is not all that rare with passenger airliners either.
In the 1980s and 1990s, NASA and several aerospace companies proposed multiple aircraft designs for hypersonic aircraft that are reminiscent of the aircraft described by Gibson. Some appeared to be based around what was learned from experiments with the XB-70 Valkyrie waverider airplane, which used air compressed by the supersonic shockwave around the aircraft to generate additional lift.
From this limited (and shaky) evidence, however, an entire aircraft was invented. The name Aurora was chosen because it was used for a single unexplained mention in budget documents of the United States Air Force in the 1980s. The triangular craft is rumored to have an unconventional propulsion system. Many experts speculate that the vehicle is powered by hydrogen or methane, though methane is the preferred candidate because of its significantly greater density. The fuel would likely be cryogenically cooled and stored in liquid form, though it would probably be cycled through the leading edges of the aircraft to provide cooling, since supersonic and hypersonic flight generates a significant amount of heat (this aspect of the plane's operation generally rules out regular liquid jet fuel, which would likely detonate prematurely at the extreme temperatures generated by hypersonic travel). Ultimately, the fuel would probably be fed into a ramjet, scramjet, or pulse detonation engine. Additionally, the strongly-swept (75 degrees in some enthusiast artwork) triangular shape of the airplane would probably make it an ideal high-speed waverider design.
For a time in the 1990s, the Aurora aircraft became a touchstone for every "cool" technology then under development. Soon it was appearing on the cover of various magazines such as Popular Science, and for some time was considered to "obviously exist" because the SR-71 had been retired and they needed something to fill the role. The Testors company produced a model kit based on designs popularized in the press. Other companies also got into the business. Estes made a model rocket kit, and Galoob made a Micro Machines toy version of the theoretical aircraft.
However, a paucity of additional sightings, combined with the widespread understanding that the US is now using low-speed "stealthy" drone aircraft in the reconnaissance role, led observers to generally agree the Aurora never existed by about 1999.
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