[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
There is a hush hush military space program in the US that gets something like 10x the funding of NASA...

That's probably Aurora, the replacement for the SR71. It's reputedly a 'ramjet' or 'scramjet' and given the performance levels it must sustain to do what is claimed I can believe it would cost as much as or more than the shuttle. If it does what the rumors say it is very close to the 'orbital plane' they are talking about for a shuttle replacement.

The reason for the lack of support for the public Version might well be the existence of the secret one. Rather than make a big public commitment to this technology the intelligence/military community would certainly rather that it be kept quiet so their potential targets don't realize it is possible and start planning to defend themselves against it. Spy satellites became dramatically less useful once various enemies learned about timing their activities between their predictable passes. If they realized that a 'plane' could fly at 200,000+ feet they would know to point their radar up high enough and watch for it. Knowing it's there lets them hide their activities even if they can't shoot it down. A major advantage in surveillance could be lost.