Mysterious Black Jet That Emerged At Long Beach Airport Identified

The unidentified black aircraft photographed outside a Long Beach Airport hangar was identified as Aevum Aerospace's RAVN X autonomous launch-aircraft mock-up, registered N567RX. Unveiled in 2020, the proposed twin-engine first stage was described as 80 feet long, with a 60-foot wingspan and a weight of 55,000 pounds, carrying a two-stage rocket able to place just over 1,000 pounds in orbit. A launch tracker reported no subsequent hardware activity and considered the programme inactive by August 2024. Witnesses saw the airframe move slightly but heard no engines and observed no exhaust.