AWST is an acronym for Australian Western Standard Time and is the time zone that is eight hours ahead of UTC. The time zone is also known in other contexts as Chinese Standard Time.
Australia
All of Western Australia observes this time zone, and does not observe daylight savings time at any point in the year, in contrast to the eastern states of Australia, such as New South Wales. The time is retained eight hours ahead of UTC the entire year.
Asia
Certain regions of eastern Asia, including all of China, also observe a time zone eight hours ahead of UTC. The time zone is also known as Chinese Standard Time in this context. These regions of Asia do not observe daylight savings time, unlike Eastern States of Australia.
The Dilemma of a Uniform Time Zone
Sunset is normally between 5pm and 7pm in a typical region on a typical day, but because all of China observes the same time zone, in the far west the Sun usually does not set until past nine o'clock, while the far east commonly experiences sunrises before 5am. If the same rule was used in the United States, then Hawaii and Florida would observe the same time, giving huge discrepancies.
Now facing the possibility that this innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into "fl world" history, known to only a few insiders.
THE SPACEPLANE'S SMALL CARGO or "Q-bay" also could be configured to deliver specialized microsatellites to low Earth orbit or, perhaps, be fitted with no-warhead hypervelocity weapons--what military visionaries have called "rods from god." Launched from the fringes of space, these high-Mach weapons could destroy deeply buried bunkers and weapons facilities.
A former Lockheed Skunk Works official once expressed confidence in the X-33 prototype orbiter's powerplants, noting that "they have history." Whether this implies the aerospikes had flown before, perhaps on an XOV, or simply referred to ground test-firings is unknown.
The fuel for the aerospike, AWST claims, is "believed to be a boron-based gel having the consistency of toothpaste and high-energy characteristics, but occupying less volume than other fuels".
AWST says: "One Pentagon official suggests that the Blackstar system was 'owned' and operated by a team of aerospace contractors, ensuring government leaders' plausible deniability.
AWST claims technicians at a company plant in St Louis in the late 1980s and early 1990s "said much of the XOV's structure was made of advanced composite materials".
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