KTNP_17.jpg' alt='X-Plane 9 Planes' title='X-Plane 9 Planes' />Aurora aircraft Wikipedia. An artists conception of the Aurora aircraft. Aurora was a rumored mid 1. American reconnaissance aircraft. JARDesign XLife You Are Not Alone in the Sky What is XLife and what does it do This impression has everything to do with the XLife Traffic plugin from. There is no substantial evidence that it was ever built or flown and it has been termed a myth. The U. S. government has consistently denied such an aircraft was ever built. Aviation and space reference site Aerospaceweb. The evidence supporting the Aurora is circumstantial or pure conjecture, there is little reason to contradict the governments position. Former Skunk Works director Ben Rich confirmed that Aurora was simply a myth in Skunk Works, a book detailing his days as the director. Mr. Rich wrote that a young colonel working in the Pentagon arbitrarily assigned the name Aurora to the funding for the B 2 bomber design competition and somehow the name was leaked to the media. Others come to different conclusions. In 2. Bill Sweetman said, Does Aurora exist Years of pursuit have led me to believe that, yes, Aurora is most likely in active development, spurred on by recent advances that have allowed technology to catch up with the ambition that launched the program a generation ago. BackgroundeditThe Aurora legend started in March 1. Aviation Week Space Technology magazine broke the news that the term Aurora had been inadvertently included in the 1. U. S. budget, as an allocation of 4. FY 1. 98. 7. 6 According to Aviation Week, Project Aurora referred to a group of exotic aircraft, and not to one particular airframe. Funding of the project allegedly reached 2. Aviation Week. In the 1. Skunk Works, Ben Rich, the former head of Lockheeds Skunk Works division, wrote that the Aurora was the budgetary code name for the stealth bomber fly off that resulted in the B 2 Spirit. EvidenceeditBy the late 1. Toronto Pearson International Airport, or Lester B. Pearson International Airport is the main airport in the Toronto metropolitan area, Canada. American Fighter Planes That Never Were. They flew, but never fought. Flight instruction tool that provides lessons from a talking team. I just cut a quick new beta build of XPlane 10. Jrg fixed the Linux crash. The crash was a problem with the plugin. The Xplanes are a series of experimental United States aircraft and rockets, used to test and evaluate new technologies and aerodynamic concepts. U. S. had the technological capability to build a Mach 5 hypersonic speed replacement for the aging Lockheed SR 7. Blackbird. Detailed examinations of the U. S. defense budget claimed to have found money missing or channeled into black projects. By the mid 1. California and the United Kingdom involving odd shaped contrails, sonic booms, and related phenomena that suggested the US had developed such an aircraft. Nothing ever linked any of these observations to any program or aircraft type, but the name Aurora was often tagged on these as a way of explaining the observations. British sighting claimseditIn late August 1. GSF Galveston Key in the North Sea, Chris Gibson and another witness saw an unfamiliar isosceles triangle shaped delta aircraft, apparently refueling from a Boeing KC 1. Stratotanker and accompanied by a pair of F 1. Gibson and his girlfriend watched the aircraft for several minutes, until they went out of sight. He subsequently drew a sketch of the formation. When the sighting was made public in 1. British Defence Secretary. X-Plane 9 Planes' title='X-Plane 9 Planes' />Tom King was told, There is no knowledge in the Mo. D of a black programme of this nature, although it would not surprise the relevant desk officers in the Air Staff and Defence Intelligence Staff if it did exist. A crash at RAF Boscombe Down in Wiltshire on 2. September 1. 99. 4 appeared closely linked to black missions, according to a report in Air. Forces Monthly. Further investigation was hampered by aircraft from the USAF flooding into the base. The crash site was protected from view by firetrucks and tarpaulins and the base was closed to all flights soon afterwards. Air Waybill Software. An unsubstantiated claim on the Horsted Keynes Village Web Site purports to show photos of the trail left after an unusual sonic boom was heard over the village in July 2. In 2. 00. 5 the information was used in a BBC report about the Aurora project. American sighting claimseditA series of unusual sonic booms was detected in Southern California beginning in mid to late 1. United States Geological Surveysensors across Southern California used to pinpoint earthquakeepicenters. The sonic booms were characteristic of a smaller vehicle, rather than of the 3. Space Shuttle orbiter. Furthermore, neither the Shuttle nor NASAs single SR 7. B was operating on the days the booms had been registered. In the article, In Plane Sight which appeared in the Washington City Paper on 3 July 1. Jim Mori, noted We cant tell anything about the vehicle. They seem stronger than other sonic booms that we record once in a while. Theyve all come on Thursday mornings about the same time, between 4 and 7. Former NASA sonic boom expert Dom Maglieri studied the 1. California Institute of Technology and has deemed that the data showed something at 9. Mach 4 to Mach 5. He also said the booms did not look like those from aircraft that had traveled through the atmosphere many miles away at Los Angeles International Airport, rather, they appeared to be booms from a high altitude aircraft directly above the ground moving at high speeds. The boom signatures of the two different aircraft patterns are wildly different. There was nothing particular to tie these events to any aircraft, but they served to increase the number of stories about the Aurora. On 2. 3 March 1. 99. Amarillo, Texas, Steven Douglass photographed the donuts on a rope contrail and linked this sighting to distinctive sounds. He described the engine noise as strange, loud pulsating roar. In addition to providing the first photographs of the distinctive contrail previously reported by many, the significance of this sighting was enhanced by Douglass reports of intercepts of radio transmissions Air to air communications. AWACS aircraft with the call sign Dragnet 5. Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, and two unknown aircraft using the call signs Darkstar November and Darkstar Mike. Messages consisted of phonetically transmitted alphanumerics. It is not known whether this radio traffic had any association with the pulser that had just flown over Amarillo. Darkstar is also a call sign of AWACS aircraft from a different squadron at Tinker AFB1. A month later, radio enthusiasts in California monitoring Edwards AFB Radar callsign Joshua Control heard early morning radio transmissions between Joshua and a high flying aircraft using the callsign Gaspipe. Youre at 6. 7,0. As in the past, nothing linked these observations to any particular aircraft or program, but the attribution to the Aurora helped expand the legend. In February 1. 99. Rachel, Nevada, and Area 5. Chuck Clark claimed to have filmed the Aurora taking off from the Groom Lake facility. In the David Darlington book Area 5. The Dreamland Chronicles, he said I even saw the Aurora take off one night or an aircraft that matched the Auroras reputed configuration, a sharp delta with twin tails about a hundred and thirty feet long. It taxied out of a lighted hangar at two thirty A. M. and used a lot of runway to take off. It had one red light on top, but the minute the wheels left the runway, the light went off and that was the last I saw of it. I didnt hear it because the wind was blowing from behind me toward the base. I asked when this had taken place. February 1. 99. 4. Obviously they didnt think anybody was out there. It was thirty below zero probably ninety below with the wind chill factor. I had hiked into White Sides from a different, harder way than usual, and stayed there two or three days among the rocks, under a camouflage tarp with six layers of clothes on. I had an insulated face mask and two sleeping bags, so I didnt present a heat signature.