First time I saw it, I was amazed that it was for real. It is not a movie mock-up. My bet is that PrimalSeal has seen it in person too.
Ok, I'm going to take a stab at it and say it's a re-entry cone/deflector for unmanned probes/explorer crafts
Saw a pic of it in a book i have about experimental/develomental aircraft that are/were flown around groom lake. Also have seen some small bits about it on a couple history channel shows dealing with V/STOL aircraft. SW
from: http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/VTOLdiscs.html The PEPP Aeroshell was created to test parachutes for the Voyager mars landing program. To simulate the thin Martian atmosphere the parachute needed to be used at an altitude more than 160,000 feet above the earth. A balloon launched from Roswell, N.M. was used to initially lift the aeroshell. The balloon drifted west to the missile range where the vehicle was dropped and the engines beneath the vehicle boosted it to the required altitude where the parachute was deployed. The tests were conducted in the summer of 1966. NASA. The voyager program was cancelled, and replaced by the much smaller Viking project several years later. Later, NASA used the Voyager name for the Voyager 1 and 2 probes to the outer planets--these had nothing to do with the Mars program called Voyager. There is one PEPP Aeroshell left over, at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. On display at the White Sands Missile Range in the Missile Garden located close to the main gate. Lots of cool craft there! Here is another photo showing the saucer on the far right.
We are having the first EVER Air AND Space Expo here at Holloman next weekend. There is supposed to be one of those things here actually doing a flight test. If I can get some video, I will and post it.
Never been there yet, but it's only 20 minutes from where I am sitting right now. I need to get out there and finally see what they got, that stuff is cool as hell.
Is that the one with the V-2 rocket? I have been to a missle park out there somewhere, but do not remember the name of it.
It has been a LONG time since I was out that way but I remember visiting that site. Pretty cool since I am into rockets. My brother is a truck driver and I used to go with him to help unload cargo and that is how I got to visit it and other places. There was another place out there that had a bunch of old warbirds and old civilian aircraft ( A Constillation [SP?] that was used by Pres. Eisenhower before they called them Air Force One) I love airplanes and it was a really great place to visit.
That is where I would stay when I went to White Sands Missile Range on business. There were some hardcore party folks in that town!
I've been to the missle garden on one of my trips to Alb. The saucer thing too me looked like another experimental vehicle I had read about, one where the inside of the cone is extremely highly polished and a high intensity laser fired into it actually superheating the air inside or something along those lines to develope thrust in a vertical plane.
