2015-02-08

The Black Knight Project


So the story goes, around 1954 an object was seen in the skies of Earth in a polar orbit.
This object has apparently been photographed from space in recent missions and is called “The Black Knight”. Supposedly it has also changed its orbit at times, a preposterous notion if it were space junk or some disused space hardware. 

You can see a whole list of YouTube videos where people drone on for hours and do basic photoshop stuff on the few grainy long-distance pictures of it.

Here are three pictures of it that are repeated ad nauseum on the net.



There are three other images that some say also show the Black Knight but to me they are something else, they don't fit.




– so I took the three “good” ones and designed a shape that fits them fairly well.







I make no claims as to the accuracy of my work here: all I have done is to look at the pictures as an aircraft engineer might and try to replicate (in Blender) what the shape would be if it were something that might fly, or at least resemble the photos. With more time one could probably improve the matching of the shape with photos 2 and 3 but I am not going to bother unless there is some point to it.
The modelling is kept very simple: the profile is traced from the "best" image of it, using it as if it were a near perfect side elevation. After crunching this I tried moving the model around and it just seems to fit the picture best like that which is quite remarkable and unlikely I must confess – but then this is all pure speculation.

Note in the second picture that the cylindrical object embedded in the top seems to be extended and may even be opened, perhaps to permit something inside e.g. a sensor or signalling device to be used?


Okay, maybe now you are thinking “ Hey, is this some top secret US spy satellite -  or maybe even a Russian one? 

I say NO, and here is why: Take a look at US and Russian space gear, specifically, spacecraft that go up, do things in orbit and then come down to land. They all look pretty much like the Rockwell Orbiter (aka “The space Shuttle”) and for one big, very good reason: reentry. 

When you have a shuttle type vehicle coming in, the whole thing gets hot, very hot and all of the leading edges and wingtips get hot enough to melt metals like aluminum. The shape of the shuttle is designed to keep it stable and in one piece during reentry : a layer of special tiles and even more special reinforced carbon parts, all of which are smoothly rounded to prevent heat concentration make it possible for the craft and crew to survive reentry. Even the new uncrewed US spaceplane the X-37B has the same basic design with wing surfaces on the bottom so that there is a large flat surface under it to “surf” its way down where the air is too thin to get lift as normal airplanes do.

Now compare that to Black Knight: sharp pointed wingtips and fins, and an overall shape that looks more like an aircraft than a space vehicle. Even as an aircraft it would be a hard plane to fly as that downward pointing nose is not going to help - well, unless it can "bend" up to straight like the nose of Concorde or other supersonic airliners. If it could and you could retract the cylinder on top completely, you would only have the problem of the engine power needed to reach orbit: even if you packed the whole body with fuels we know of, it would still not reach orbit without help (a big booster rocket), and that only provokes a bigger question: why then make it an aerodynamic form at all? It would not help much reaching orbit from Earth, and unless the whole craft was made of some pretty rare and amazing material, it would only come down as a shower of spacejunk. 

Perspective view

Side elevation with wings levelled

Top elevation

Rear elevation


I have kept the modelling simple, I'm not going to do any more as there are too many questions and problem with the whole story. Assuming that the images are genuine, for the reasons given above I have only questions and no answers.It doesn't even look like any of our experimental  hypersonic planes - so I'm going to to say it is probably a fake. 
No, I am not going to invoke aliens: I will need more good evidence than a few very blurry photos to get me convinced about that.

Oh yes, if you ever need someone to reconstruct plans from photos or pictures, I can do that.
Thanks for reading and beware people in tinfoil hats.