7 ms·

Declassified: America's Secret Flying Saucer

92 points by morisy 14y ago

vegasbrianc 14y ago
So when are they going to declassify Roswell since they have now revealed the "Flying Saucers"?
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  They declassified a lot of it a couple of years ago, I saw a good documentary on what was going on there. They had pictures of the crash site clean-up and everything (it was an Angel or Blackbird that crashed iirc, which does agree with the reports of a strange, not seen before material)
  - vegasbrianc 14y ago
    Thanks for that ZoFreX. I will be sure to look it up. Do you know who did the documentary?
    - ZoFreX 14y ago
      Sorry I've looked it up and it appears I was mistaken about the source of the infamous 1947 crash. The OXCART project did operate out of Area 51 though, and there were a number of crashes and cover ups - they were working on spy planes after all!
  - jonnathanson 14y ago
    You know, I wouldn't be surprised if the city of Roswell itself, if not the state of New Mexico, had an interest in keeping the mythology alive and the documents classified. When the Roswell incident struck a chord with the public, it probably put the city on the map to some degree. I'm sure it has driven a fair amount of tourism over the years, if not strong pop-cultural iconology.
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      New Mexican here. The fascination is pretty much confined to Roswell. Yes, it definitely put the city on the map, and yes, it drives some tourism. But Roswell is not large and it's hard to imagine how a city would petition for classified stuff to stay classified. Besides, cranks are cranks and no quantity of facts will serve to dissuade them. Roswell's UFO crap is already extremely hokey. It's part of the culture now, so it doesn't matter if there's a reason for it or not. Just like Zozobra up in Santa Fe, it's just this thing.
  - maaku 14y ago
    The Roswell incident predates Angel/Blackbird by decades. Regardless, the incident at Roswell has long since been declassified. It was a crash of flight number 4 of Project Mogul, a use of high-altitude weather balloons to detect Soviet nuclear tests. If you read the original written reports of what was found, it describes very clearly a prototype Project Mogul payload: a circular array of microphones and radar transponders attached using sticks, rubber strands, and scotch tape, and wrapped up in aluminium foil (for EFI shielding and radar reflectance).
    - ZoFreX 14y ago
      > The Roswell incident predates Angel/Blackbird by decades. Ugh, I've made a huge number of mistakes in my comment. Should have looked it up first. Angel is the U-2, not the A-12 like I thought, U-2 flew from 1955, already too late, A-12 even later obviously. Thanks for the info on project mogul!
      - maaku 14y ago
        IIRC I think George Dyson wrote a book or article on Project Mogul at some point... or at least he researched it in depth enough to talk in detail about it for 30 minutes at a lecture of his I went to. My google-fu can't seem to find a citation to him though. It's actually a very interesting history linked to the U-2, A-12/SR-71, etc. Seismography and atmospheric radioisotopes ended up being an easier and more precise way to detect Soviet nuclear testing. But the balloons developed were then used to spy on and map Soviet installations in Siberia, dropping their camera payloads in the sea of Japan. Of course the same sort of overflights would later be done by the U-2 and then SR-71 until the early Keyhole satellites made the very concept of atmospheric overflight obsolete.
- jmccree 14y ago
  Though a lot of people do not believe it, they declassified Project Mogul which seems to explain it.
michael_h 14y ago
What exactly has been declassified? One has been on display at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH for ages[1]. [1] http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=10856 http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id...
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  >> and the first prototype Avrocar came to the National Museum ... in 2007. The article explains that the project was declassified in 2001 but it has taken 11 years for the 2 billion record backlog to get to it. Which implies that the US Government has found an almost perfect means of classifying anything top secret for ever - produce paperwork faster than it can be sifted :-)
jgrahamc 14y ago
Video of it 'in flight': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQK3UcsD-JY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQK3UcsD-JY
- cpleppert 14y ago
  I believe it got a maximum of about three feet off the ground before aerodynamic instability made it impossible to control. I'm not sure even with fly-by-wire the problem could be fixed. Just varying the engine throttle and thrust redirection machinery wouldn't be sufficient.
  - roc 14y ago
    As I recall, the control problems were in the boundary layer, when the ground effect benefits waned, but before the engines pushed it into 'flight'-proper. That said, it also sounded like it was capable of 'flight'-proper for the same reason that just about any-shaped craft is capable of flight when strapped to engines of such outsize mass and power.
    - starpilot 14y ago
      Cringe. That's not a boundary layer: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/boundlay.html http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/boundlay.html If you're talking about a planetary boundary layer, then ground effect occurs within that because the PBL extends to the ground.
      - roc 14y ago
        Sorry about that. I didn't mean boundary layer as a technical term. I just meant the problem was in the transition from the ground-effect-dominated regime to the regime of traditional flight.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
"...In 2001, U.S. Air Force personnel cleared the document cache for public release...But it took 11 years to crack open the boxes in College Park and glimpse the saucer secrets within..." So for things the government wants to declassify, there's over an eleven-year waiting period. Wow.
- cpleppert 14y ago
  Considering this is for a vehicle that never came close to working in its prototype form and was based on an ill-conceived fascination with a saucer design that required it to be nothing but an ensemble of jet engines with thrust redirection required in every direction it makes one wonder how anything ever gets released to the public.
  - nobodysfool 14y ago
    Never came close to working? I read that it achieved Mach 3, well before the first reported Mach 3: The first flight at faster than three times the speed of sound occurred on 27 September 1956. The aircraft was the Bell X-2 and the pilot was Captain Milburn Apt. The Bell X-2 was launched from a specially-modified Boeing B-50 at 31,800 feet. It achieved a speed of Mach 3.196 (2,094 mph). However, the flight then encountered problems known as inertia coupling and Apt jettisoned the cockpit capsule. For some reason, he was unable to use his parachute and was killed - it was his first flight in the X-2. The aircraft itself crashed of course and was scrapped. So, if it did achieve Mach 3, I see no reason why they would have considered scrapping it, since apparently it did better than the Bell X-2 could have done, earlier than the Bell X-2 experiment even.
- elorant 14y ago
  If you read it the other way around this means that top-secret technology the military is using is at least a decade ahead of its time.
  - jff 14y ago
    If the military is using it, isn't it by definition not ahead of its time?
Gravityloss 14y ago
This is about the third time this is on hacker news and it's been on multiple web pages before that for years. This fake novelty is just click bait.
Gravityloss 14y ago
They show two versions in the diagram. One has conventional jet engines inside the saucer, but the other one has parts of the whole saucer spinning so the fuselage works like an engine. They have compressor blades, burners and turbine blades inside. That is interesting, and I haven't run into anyone pointing out this distinction or doing any analysis on it. I don't know what limits the aerodynamics but potentially you could get really high amounts of thrust, something more comparable to a helicopter than a Harrier. You could run into big problems with gyroscopic effects as well, maybe you would need two "spools" that counter rotate.
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  That second one, from a basic analysis... it isn't really much different to a helicopter in its principle, given the size and spacing of the outer turbine blades. An obvious concern given the similarities to a helicopter is how well can something with a rotor the same size and an even larger jet engine stay in the air if it has a smaller fuel tank? As for the design they actually constructed, it seems like it would be a lot more feasible with modern technology. It's not clear to me that there's any actual advantage to building a flying saucer though, other than novelty.
stefantalpalaru 14y ago
I wonder if they used Coandă's designs: http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/Coanda.htm http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/Coanda.htm
btipling 14y ago
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avrocar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avrocar
glabifrons 14y ago
I find the US Air Force's Nuclear Flying Saucer much more interesting. It was originally published in November of 2000 by Popular Mechanics, but I am unable to locate the article on their site, so here's google's scan of the magazine in which it appeared: http://books.google.com/books?id=MxXlKb9wIe0C&lpg=PA68&ots=RskaaSe83R&dq=air%20force%20nuclear%20flying%20saucer%20lrv&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q=air%20force%20nuclear%20flying%20saucer%20lrv&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=MxXlKb9wIe0C&lpg=PA68&#...
biot 14y ago
Interestingly, the work for engineering and manufacturing was billed out at a whopping $6 an hour: http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/Vf/saucer-secrets-12-1012-lgn.jpg http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/V...
LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago
It's called a distraction cover-up. You release some documents that more or less confirm a long standing suspicion, then while all the sci-fi nerds are poring over the documents you do something that would otherwise be carefully scrutinized by these same nerds if they weren't busy looking for hints of little green men in the released documents.
fnordfnordfnord 14y ago
You know, I get it that we shouldn't declassify our secret military tech and cede any unnecessary advantage to the Red-Commies (nevermind the fact that they had KGB agent working at Avro), but I'd bet that a lot of research conducted at the behest of the military has commercial value. I'd also bet that we spend a lot of effort inventing some of these things over again. It seems like a huge waste to keep these types of projects classified so long past their relevance.
js2 14y ago
Previous discussion from when it was covered by extremetech.com: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4627177 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4627177

92 points by morisy 14y ago

vegasbrianc 14y ago

So when are they going to declassify Roswell since they have now revealed the "Flying Saucers"?

ZoFreX 14y ago
They declassified a lot of it a couple of years ago, I saw a good documentary on what was going on there. They had pictures of the crash site clean-up and everything (it was an Angel or Blackbird that crashed iirc, which does agree with the reports of a strange, not seen before material)
- vegasbrianc 14y ago
  Thanks for that ZoFreX. I will be sure to look it up. Do you know who did the documentary?
  - ZoFreX 14y ago
    Sorry I've looked it up and it appears I was mistaken about the source of the infamous 1947 crash. The OXCART project did operate out of Area 51 though, and there were a number of crashes and cover ups - they were working on spy planes after all!
- jonnathanson 14y ago
  You know, I wouldn't be surprised if the city of Roswell itself, if not the state of New Mexico, had an interest in keeping the mythology alive and the documents classified. When the Roswell incident struck a chord with the public, it probably put the city on the map to some degree. I'm sure it has driven a fair amount of tourism over the years, if not strong pop-cultural iconology.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    New Mexican here. The fascination is pretty much confined to Roswell. Yes, it definitely put the city on the map, and yes, it drives some tourism. But Roswell is not large and it's hard to imagine how a city would petition for classified stuff to stay classified. Besides, cranks are cranks and no quantity of facts will serve to dissuade them. Roswell's UFO crap is already extremely hokey. It's part of the culture now, so it doesn't matter if there's a reason for it or not. Just like Zozobra up in Santa Fe, it's just this thing.
- maaku 14y ago
  The Roswell incident predates Angel/Blackbird by decades. Regardless, the incident at Roswell has long since been declassified. It was a crash of flight number 4 of Project Mogul, a use of high-altitude weather balloons to detect Soviet nuclear tests. If you read the original written reports of what was found, it describes very clearly a prototype Project Mogul payload: a circular array of microphones and radar transponders attached using sticks, rubber strands, and scotch tape, and wrapped up in aluminium foil (for EFI shielding and radar reflectance).
  - ZoFreX 14y ago
    > The Roswell incident predates Angel/Blackbird by decades. Ugh, I've made a huge number of mistakes in my comment. Should have looked it up first. Angel is the U-2, not the A-12 like I thought, U-2 flew from 1955, already too late, A-12 even later obviously. Thanks for the info on project mogul!
    - maaku 14y ago
      IIRC I think George Dyson wrote a book or article on Project Mogul at some point... or at least he researched it in depth enough to talk in detail about it for 30 minutes at a lecture of his I went to. My google-fu can't seem to find a citation to him though. It's actually a very interesting history linked to the U-2, A-12/SR-71, etc. Seismography and atmospheric radioisotopes ended up being an easier and more precise way to detect Soviet nuclear testing. But the balloons developed were then used to spy on and map Soviet installations in Siberia, dropping their camera payloads in the sea of Japan. Of course the same sort of overflights would later be done by the U-2 and then SR-71 until the early Keyhole satellites made the very concept of atmospheric overflight obsolete.
jmccree 14y ago
Though a lot of people do not believe it, they declassified Project Mogul which seems to explain it.

michael_h 14y ago

What exactly has been declassified? One has been on display at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH for ages[1]. [1] http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=10856 http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id...

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
>> and the first prototype Avrocar came to the National Museum ... in 2007. The article explains that the project was declassified in 2001 but it has taken 11 years for the 2 billion record backlog to get to it. Which implies that the US Government has found an almost perfect means of classifying anything top secret for ever - produce paperwork faster than it can be sifted :-)

jgrahamc 14y ago

Video of it 'in flight': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQK3UcsD-JY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQK3UcsD-JY

cpleppert 14y ago
I believe it got a maximum of about three feet off the ground before aerodynamic instability made it impossible to control. I'm not sure even with fly-by-wire the problem could be fixed. Just varying the engine throttle and thrust redirection machinery wouldn't be sufficient.
- roc 14y ago
  As I recall, the control problems were in the boundary layer, when the ground effect benefits waned, but before the engines pushed it into 'flight'-proper. That said, it also sounded like it was capable of 'flight'-proper for the same reason that just about any-shaped craft is capable of flight when strapped to engines of such outsize mass and power.
  - starpilot 14y ago
    Cringe. That's not a boundary layer: http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/boundlay.html http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/boundlay.html If you're talking about a planetary boundary layer, then ground effect occurs within that because the PBL extends to the ground.
    - roc 14y ago
      Sorry about that. I didn't mean boundary layer as a technical term. I just meant the problem was in the transition from the ground-effect-dominated regime to the regime of traditional flight.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

"...In 2001, U.S. Air Force personnel cleared the document cache for public release...But it took 11 years to crack open the boxes in College Park and glimpse the saucer secrets within..." So for things the government wants to declassify, there's over an eleven-year waiting period. Wow.

cpleppert 14y ago
Considering this is for a vehicle that never came close to working in its prototype form and was based on an ill-conceived fascination with a saucer design that required it to be nothing but an ensemble of jet engines with thrust redirection required in every direction it makes one wonder how anything ever gets released to the public.
- nobodysfool 14y ago
  Never came close to working? I read that it achieved Mach 3, well before the first reported Mach 3: The first flight at faster than three times the speed of sound occurred on 27 September 1956. The aircraft was the Bell X-2 and the pilot was Captain Milburn Apt. The Bell X-2 was launched from a specially-modified Boeing B-50 at 31,800 feet. It achieved a speed of Mach 3.196 (2,094 mph). However, the flight then encountered problems known as inertia coupling and Apt jettisoned the cockpit capsule. For some reason, he was unable to use his parachute and was killed - it was his first flight in the X-2. The aircraft itself crashed of course and was scrapped. So, if it did achieve Mach 3, I see no reason why they would have considered scrapping it, since apparently it did better than the Bell X-2 could have done, earlier than the Bell X-2 experiment even.
elorant 14y ago
If you read it the other way around this means that top-secret technology the military is using is at least a decade ahead of its time.
- jff 14y ago
  If the military is using it, isn't it by definition not ahead of its time?

Gravityloss 14y ago

This is about the third time this is on hacker news and it's been on multiple web pages before that for years. This fake novelty is just click bait.

Gravityloss 14y ago

They show two versions in the diagram. One has conventional jet engines inside the saucer, but the other one has parts of the whole saucer spinning so the fuselage works like an engine. They have compressor blades, burners and turbine blades inside. That is interesting, and I haven't run into anyone pointing out this distinction or doing any analysis on it. I don't know what limits the aerodynamics but potentially you could get really high amounts of thrust, something more comparable to a helicopter than a Harrier. You could run into big problems with gyroscopic effects as well, maybe you would need two "spools" that counter rotate.

ZoFreX 14y ago
That second one, from a basic analysis... it isn't really much different to a helicopter in its principle, given the size and spacing of the outer turbine blades. An obvious concern given the similarities to a helicopter is how well can something with a rotor the same size and an even larger jet engine stay in the air if it has a smaller fuel tank? As for the design they actually constructed, it seems like it would be a lot more feasible with modern technology. It's not clear to me that there's any actual advantage to building a flying saucer though, other than novelty.

stefantalpalaru 14y ago

I wonder if they used Coandă's designs: http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/Coanda.htm http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/Coanda.htm

btipling 14y ago

Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avrocar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avrocar

glabifrons 14y ago

I find the US Air Force's Nuclear Flying Saucer much more interesting. It was originally published in November of 2000 by Popular Mechanics, but I am unable to locate the article on their site, so here's google's scan of the magazine in which it appeared: http://books.google.com/books?id=MxXlKb9wIe0C&lpg=PA68&ots=RskaaSe83R&dq=air%20force%20nuclear%20flying%20saucer%20lrv&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q=air%20force%20nuclear%20flying%20saucer%20lrv&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=MxXlKb9wIe0C&lpg=PA68&#...

biot 14y ago

Interestingly, the work for engineering and manufacturing was billed out at a whopping $6 an hour: http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/Vf/saucer-secrets-12-1012-lgn.jpg http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/images/V...

LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago

It's called a distraction cover-up. You release some documents that more or less confirm a long standing suspicion, then while all the sci-fi nerds are poring over the documents you do something that would otherwise be carefully scrutinized by these same nerds if they weren't busy looking for hints of little green men in the released documents.

fnordfnordfnord 14y ago

You know, I get it that we shouldn't declassify our secret military tech and cede any unnecessary advantage to the Red-Commies (nevermind the fact that they had KGB agent working at Avro), but I'd bet that a lot of research conducted at the behest of the military has commercial value. I'd also bet that we spend a lot of effort inventing some of these things over again. It seems like a huge waste to keep these types of projects classified so long past their relevance.

js2 14y ago

Previous discussion from when it was covered by extremetech.com: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4627177 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4627177