ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

NICK COOK 145
Was this the reason for the crushing silence that had followed the
industry's initial burst of enthusiasm for antigravity in 1956? If so, it was
the simplest explanation of all. And I had spent months on the wrong
heading.
I pressed Gordon on the missing three aircraft, but in view of the
direction my thoughts had taken, I must have unintentionally signaled
my indifference.
When he raised his eyes to mine, they told me that the meeting was
over.
Minutes later, Lindeke escorted me back toward the high heat that was
baking the floor of the Antelope Valley.
Just before I left the building, I stopped in front of a large chart on the
wall of the lobby area. I hadn't noticed it on the way in.
It proudly illustrated the lineage of every Skunk Works aircraft since
the XP-80. Past the picture of the U-2, past the SR-71 Blackbird and the
F-117A Stealth Fighter, past the YF-22 and DarkStar, and there was
something called "Astra."
Sitting at the top of the tree, Astra looked like an ultra-high-speed
reconnaissance aircraft; every pundit's dream of how Aurora ought to
look.
It was difficult to gauge Lindeke's reaction because he did not remove
his sunglasses, but he knew as well as I that the Skunk Works had built
nothing since DarkStar; and DarkStar, being unmanned, looked nothing
like "Astra."
In the car, I pressed him for an answer and he promised to come back
to me. It was several weeks later, long after I returned to England, that he
finally did.
"Astra was a high-speed airliner we studied in the 1970s that got
canned," he announced without any preamble. "I checked."
It took me a moment to absorb this. "The thing I saw was at the very
top of the chart, Ron, and it was most certainly not an airliner."
"Hey," he interjected testily, "the only Astra anyone here ever heard
of was something we considered more than 20 years ago and never built.
Take it or leave it." For a moment, the receiver filled with the sound of
his breathing. "Call me if you got any further questions, won't you?" And
with that he was gone.